Considering how well I can procrastinate everything from doing laundry to changing my son’s diaper, it’s not surprising that it’s taken us so long to get this blog off the ground. (A blog which, at the time of this writing, is still an unpopulated domain name.) The delay stems from a number of reasons: fear (what if people don’t think I’m funny? or what if they do, and then I *stop* being funny? or what if my eleventh-grade history teacher reads about my stretchmarks in Drowning My Child?), laziness/distraction (why write when I can lay face-down in my son’s nursery instead? is writing a blog post better than taking a shower this week?), pride (I won’t launch until I have a proper amount of content! I’ll make sure that all of my stories are grammatically coherent, clever, and hilarious! — an impossible task, and won that I has sirtainly not acheived hear), etc.
Regardless of my reasons, I have been plagued by a recurrent question these past few months: what to name this blog. And let me tell you. It’s easier to name a kid.
For starters, if you name your child the same name as someone else, the original name-holder can be honored at best or seriously miffed at worst, but they really can’t come after you for, you know, intellectual property infringement. Additionally, you hope that your child will be chosen for interviews, friendships, jobs, etc. based on his personality and qualifications, rather than on his name (good luck, Borealis!), whereas a blog’s title is half of its appeal (or lack thereof). Furthermore, your child can always go by his middle name if he doesn’t like his first name, but I’m pretty sure it’s not normal to give one’s blog a middle name.
But I digress. As this blog approached actualization, I started contemplating names in earnest. This came to a head last night, as my darling husband was half-helping me cook dinner.
(Brief side note: I am not a good cook. While I was still in school, Taylor and I ate out A LOT. I am now trying to recover from years of convenient eating habits. This leads to some interesting food choices for us as I reinvent the dinner wheel. Last night, it was bok choy, mushrooms, corn, and chicken thighs. Curious how those go together? Short answer: they don’t. By fate or chance, they happened to be the last of our fresh food in the house.)
“So I’ve been thinking,” I said, “that I’d like to have the blog up by the end of September.”
[Author’s Note: I am doing the final edits for this piece on October 15. So much for goals.]
Taylor: <grunts in query>
I rinsed sand off the bok choy, somehow funneling all of the water straight onto the floor. “Yeah, I mean, with a goal date, I’ll actually have some impetus to write, and I already have those four stories that we can post immediately.”
Taylor: <grunts in assent>
Standing in the puddle of sandy water, I sliced the bok choy into thick strips of stalk and leaf, desperately hoping that both were edible. (Note: They are. Here is a good resource for bok choy preparation — one that I clearly did not consult in time.) I tossed the white chunks of possibly-edible vegetable into the simmering saucepan and started cutting corn off the cob.
“My working title has been ‘The Bad Mom Blog’, but I think that name is probably already taken.” This assumption was confirmed with a brief Google search. Ditto for A Bad Mom Blog, That Bad Mom Blog, The Bad Mommy Blog, and, of course, the eminent Scary Mommy website.
“I need something other than ‘bad’ or ‘scary’, I guess.”
Taylor: <grunts in confirmation>
As the bok choy grew translucent, I swapped the stalks for the corn kernels, then began chopping the mushrooms. “What about something that indicates that I’m like a halfway mom?” (A term, notably, that is represented on Urban Dictionary as a euphemism for pregnancy — not quite the correct connotation for me.) “What about, like, ‘Borderline Motherhood’? It describes that I’m living on the edge, right?”
Taylor: <grunts in contemplation>
Removing the corn from the pan, I tossed in the mushrooms and bok choy leaves, then retrieved the chicken thighs from the oven. “Babe, can you cut these up for me?” Taylor grabbed a knife and cutting board, while I did a Google search for “borderline motherhood”. The good news: no blogs exist by that name! The bad news: “borderline mother” is an actual term, and not one I want associated with my blog. Psychology Today’s article The Borderline Mother: The Brutal Womb and the Child of the Borderline opens with: “‘I wish my mother was dead…is that a terrible thing to say… am I a horrible person?’” So, maybe not “Borderline Motherhood” after all.
The mushroom/leaf slurry was finally done, and it was time to recombine all the now-“cooked” ingredients in our too-small pan. (One day, we’ll own a wok.) “Ok Taylor, can you help me recombine these, and then you can add the chicken?”
Taylor: <grunts in distraction>
I finally looked over at what so thoroughly occupied my husband. The knife and cutting board that I had perceived as a willing obedience to my express wishes were actually nothing of the sort. Instead, Taylor leaned over the board, meticulously cutting a handful of grapes into smaller and smaller pieces. The chicken thighs lay nearby, whole and wholly neglected.
“What are you doing!” I shouted reasonably.
“What?” my laconic husband finally uttered. “Oh! I’m cutting up grapes for the baby!”
“Are you kidding me! I asked you to cut up the chicken for dinner, and instead you’re cutting up grapes for the baby — a task which, it bears mentioning, you have already done once tonight!” And he had — about fifteen minutes earlier.
Taylor dropped his gaze sheepishly. “Well, all of those pieces sort of ended up on the ground, so I’m getting him some more.”
“Gahhhhhhhhh!” I continued calmly. “Of course they did! He is yet incapable of picking up pea-sized objects, and might I remind you, he is still on the whole fed by breast!”
And that’s when it hit me. “Trying My Breast”. Desperate, heartfelt, easily misunderstood, and a little slutty. If that isn’t the summation of these past seven months, I don’t know what is.
So there you have it. As I combined the disparate yet equally unappealing foods into a single dish, I felt more and more certain about the name of this blog which you are now reading. After all, our best — or breast — is all that any of us can give. Thank God that His grace accomplishes what we cannot!
And with that, I leave you to explore the rest of Trying My Breast.
P.S. Most of the new set of grape pieces ended up on the floor as well. (See picture.) Those that didn’t made for an especially bad baby poop in the morning.
