Guiltless.

It has been almost 2 1/2 years since i've written in this blog. After the initial post I wrote about finding out I was pregnant, I got a bit of an emotional backlash from my man's ex-wife over what I wrote. A bit of confusion I suppose over my style of writing. Still a little confused on my end about the whole situation. Either way, with all the emotions I had rolling as well as having to deal with other people's feelings I decided to put aside this thing for a while. A long while.

I feel like it's a standard for bloggers and zine writer to start with the statement "I'm not quite sure how to start this." So there, I said it. I guess I need to express to myself, if not to anyone else, what's goin on in this head of mine. So many things have happened in this chunk of time in between times. Our pregnancy story, which could fill a book, but i'll shorten for now by saying we intended on a beautiful water birth at home and ended up with a c-section by a man we now call Dr. Asshole/Dr. Death/Boots Mcgee/etc, after our daughter decided to wait almost 43 weeks to come out. Our band Blast Rag shittily breaking up over what i'll call dram queen bullshit. The birth of our beautiful daughter Luella Ann Marie Blanco, born kicking, screaming and shitting on Dec. 6th, 2010. The aclimation of our two families, moving, becoming a stay at home mom, taking a break from music, breast feeding, re-encorporating music into my life, learning to deal with family on a totally different level now that i'm a momma myself, vacations, music festivals, starting to work again, re-emerging into the scene as a mother and a ... not new.. but different, older, wiser (?) version of myself, chickens, gardens, bikes, love, hate, you know... soooo much stuff.

I'm just gonna go a bit at a time. Start with what's going on right now, fill in the blanks, I guess, as I go along. I don't think i'll be telling too many people that are close to me about this. For now anyways. It still makes me a little nervous.

Maybe a little bit about me would be appropriate right now. I'm 28 year old punk rock mamma. Currently a stay at home mom, with a decent history of working as a kitchen witch in some pretty good restaurants all over the place. I was born outside of Detroit where my mom's family is from, but spent the bulk of my childhood in and around San Diego. Teen years were spent back in Detroit after my parents split. Left home at 16 due to some serious family issues and to quench my own wanderlust. Somewhere along the line after a long series of moving around and around and around, I ended up in Lafayette, La ... for the second time. Where I fell for an old friend and am now helping to raise 3 kids (one natural for me, two from a previous marriage), 5 chickens, 1 pitbull named Jezebel, a guinea pig named Johnny Cash, a tarantula, and currently and exhaustingly a real nice pack of drain flies hovering around our compost container. I've played music since I like to remember in some good bands, some bad ones, some solo project... done some touring, recorded some stuff, and booked and played a long list of shows that i'm stoked to have been a part of. I'm pretty liberal, actually that's probably an understatement, but i'm not going too much further into that. Actually i'm not gonna go too much further into a bio at all for now. They'll be more. Later.

Last night was the first show for our newest project, Guiltless. Part thrash metal, part hardcore, a little Motorhead, a little doom, a little crust. Pretty much trying to tastefully combine all the genres we love without being too obvious. The show last night was with Raedon Kong (Good friends and lafayette locals playing heavy, post 90's noise, slightly mathy, ambient .. can I just say neurosis-ish in a good way? The sub genre thing can get a little confusing.), Red Shield (local doomers) and Windhand, the touring band from Richmond, VA. A power house of amps and members of bands like Cough, Alabama Thuderpussy, and facedowninshit. Very much an Electric Wizard worship band with female vocals, perfect amp tones and massive levels. It was a good show to open, and we nailed our set. Got in there, loaded in quick, blazed through a 26 minute set pretty much fuck-up free, broke down and reloaded our shit quick, caught some good bands and enjoyed the rest of the night. Got some awesome compliments, and not really any negative feedback. Actually, a most excellent and satisfying first show.

Juggling being a mommy and a musician is a complex but rewarding task. Me and my man make it work sometimes by sheer luck. We play music together, which helps and sometimes makes it harder. Constantly scheduling babysitters, pinching pennies to pay them, finding time for practices amongst a never ending series of daily grinds can get tricky, and a lot of times, extremely stressful..

There is also the struggle of overcoming your former party babe ways when diving back into the scene. This goes for being a non-musician as well, but I think gets a bit trickier when playing Rock-N-Roll. Rock-N-Roll and partying have pretty much gone hand in hand since the dawn of Rock-N-Roll, and don't worry I am well aware of the strange periods in American Hardcore and later in floor punch hardcore crapshit where everyone was all SXE and sometimes bizzarely violent about it (?).. I was too for a minute when I was 15. Well, not the violent part anyway.

Sometimes I feel like it's harder for my man than it is for me to be sober. I'm not sure if it's the guilty stay at home mommy side of me or what. I'm no angel, this may be controversial to some, but in the time from 8:30 til 1:30 in the morning I had 3.5 beers. I'm not sure what the math is on that and where I would be on that breathalizer test, but we did drive after our 3.5 beers to go get our kid from the sitter. We also purchased way too much Taco Smell on the way home and proceeded to eat it on the couch in our undies with Lu and watch part of a Willem Defoe movie before passing out together for what could have been a much longer night of sleep. Does this make me a bad mommy? I dunno, you tell me, i'm sure you will if you reeeally need to. It's hard to make an invisible line in your head of what is appropriate and what is not and then staying on the good side of it. We try though and I think all in all, though we may be a different breed of parents, we're good ones. We love our kids passionately and try our hardest to do right by them.

This morning we woke up early, well I woke up early, my man came later and cleaned up a sweet moped we've had in our shed for a few years now. It's a 1980 Peugeot tsm-u3, and it's fucking sweet. A few years ago the ol' man bought it off a friend for a hundred bucks after I found a busted broke as fuck suzuki in the trash. After much debating he finally "realized" that he should have give it to me in the first place and after trading an old drum set the Peugeot was tied up to the back of a good friend's truck today and on it's way to be cleaned up and put back in working order so mamma can have a little fun. Just to make myself seem like less of a bitch it should be known that my daddy taught me how to ride motorbikes when I was a wee one and it's all i've talked about wanting since me and the ball and chain got together so it burnt my lil ass up a bit when he went out and got a real cool guy nice moped cause I came home with the fucked up one... annnnnyways.

So yeah, it's been a busy and fun weekend so far, and this party is only halfway done! Wooooo! Tomorrow we might even cook some food and go swimming!! Weather permitting that is. Ahh domestication. It's the little things that excite and aggravate you.

I guess this is enough for one blogging episode. I know this may sound like a strange jump to make in subject matter, but i'd like to talk next about where i'm at with my body a year and a half after having my daughter. My life has been a series of body issues and weight ups and downs and though it may be against my punk rock nature to admit to weakness or talk about how I go to the gym all the time now, I'm just gonna let it out. For various reasons, mainly my own accountability to my own health, I might use this blog as an excuse to maintain my regimen at finding a healthy and happy body weight. We'll see, i'm gonna think on it tonight, and we'll find out tomorrow where i'm at with it.

So good night you few readers... if any.. Don't let the bed bugs bite, and if they do, shave and medicate yo shit.