Milk Bath

(*apologizes to my cousin in advance who will probably get really mad at me for writing this. But it's funny an educational! Don't kill me. *)

“My back is killing me,” my cousin said as she placed her baby into the stroller.

“Eh, you’ll feel better after you get in the hot tub," I replied.  We had already spent a full day at Bible Camp and were looking forward to the solitude of "Adult Swim," an hour long open hot tub and swimming pool session for adults-only.

“That sounds pretty good. But wait…is it safe to go into the hot tub? I’m still breastfeeding.”

“What could go wrong?"

“I know this sounds stupid, but I don’t want to get into super-hot-tub and have my milk supply go bad somehow. Not just from the heat, but there's all kinds of bacteria in the water that can get into your milk duct and cause an infection.”

“The things they don’t tell you about pregnancy in health class…”

“You don't know the half of it."

“Well, you're the first person with a baby that I've ever hung out with, so I don't know squat. But I have a fancy cellphone with...
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The Accent

After getting over the language barrier in Kindergarten (read that story here), I spoke English fluently...but vit un accent and a stah-studd-stutter. I had to attend an English as a Second Language (ESL) class until middle school in order to get over my linguistic problems.

I always hated going to ESL because they would make me color. Even at that young age, I couldn’t understand how coloring would help me learn English and I had no patience for the arduous activity. To make matters worse, they forced me to recite tongue twisters in front of five other kids, and I was the worst one in the group.

One day, my kindergarten teacher was reading everyone a story about owls on the magic circular carpet, and my ESL teachers came to collect me.

"Stephie, time for your speech lessons,” my teacher said, getting ready to flip to the next page of the storybook.

“No! I na…na…na…need to know vhat's gonna happen to dah ovl!”

"No, it's time for you to learn to speak English properly!"

Everyone was looking at me. I didn't like that. "Pa-pa-pa-pleaase, I just vant to know..."

This escalated in volume (and...
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Campy Weekend

Like every other year, I went to Long Beach Island to "Bible Camp" with my family for Mother's Day weekend. (Read horrible-but-hilarious  past Bible Camp stories here).

The struggle with Bible Camp never revolves around the actual Camp itself, which is a well-maintained old hotel with a clean beach and little harbor.

The problem is always the BEHAVIOR of just a few of my family members, who go out of their way to act outlandish in this fairly conservative and relaxed setting. I think that if it weren't for the polite nature of our fellow campers, my brood would have been kicked out long ago.

For those of you not on the American Goulash Twitter or Facebook, here are some of the Top Live-Tweets from the weekend, mostly by my hilarious & fabulous mother, Anyu:

--

"Good ting you're unemployed so you could go on vacation today."
Me: "I worked today! I run my own business."
::scoffs:: "Dat's not a REAL job."

--

(about three hours into the vacation:)

Me: I've decided that it's OK to tweet from the toilet if you're not actually going to the bathroom. You see, I'm hiding...

--

"Look, Stephie! Dey peeled all of dese hardboiled...
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Disney Vorld

“We’re going to Disney Vorld!” my aunt announced in the middle of the living room.

I dropped my doll and looked up at her with shock and awe. Disney World is something that most kids dream of, but I was completely obsessed with. I looked at Mickey Mouse like most kids look at Santa Claus; I thought he was responsible for my all-time favorite movie, “The Little Mermaid,” so I assumed that he could turn me into a mermaid if I was a good girl and asked him politely.

My aunt looked down at me with a frown or even existed, almost as if she forgot that I was standing there. “Oh, but we only have enough money and room in the car to bring von person, so we can either take YOU or Nagymama.”

“I’ve been very good and I’ve done all my homework and…”

“Yah…dat’s dah ting. You have homevork. I guess I can’t pull you out of first grade to go to Disney Vorld because den you’ll stay back and never be able to get a real job.”

“But…” My eyes started to well up with tears.

“Ah, vhat does it matter anyway?...
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The First Kiss

Believe it or not, there was a time when you couldn't just log onto the internet and find someone that shared your love of vampires, video games, and comic books. If you wanted to talk to a random person you had never met, you needed to find a service to get you a penpal. Luckily enough, Wizard World Magazine knew that nerds would have trouble finding other nerds, so they published pen pal requests for free in their monthly magazine. My mom would have killed me if she knew that I put my age, home address into a nationally-circulated publication, so I told her it was a part of some intricate school project.

"I vish men gave me dis much attention," she said, as she opened all of my letters to ensure that they weren't full of bombs, poisoned candy, or pornographic catalogs.

Over the years, I spoke to quite a diverse body of people from all over the world in this handwritten letter-writing style (some of whom I still speak to today!) but it was Thomas that really caught my attention. He was handsome young fellow from New York that...
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