Two Punks In Love

Land Mines

Trace

Marianne was wrong the other day, when she said I didn't need encouragement.

I'm kind of at my wit's end, here. Since that damn doctor "managed" Kat's expectations by telling her all the bad shit about being pregnant with twins, Kat has cried everyday. It doesn't matter how sweet, how funny, how low-key, or how rock-star I try to be, I find her weeping in corners. As soon as she realizes I'm aware, she bursts into a flurry of activity to try to shut the tears down.

But she won't talk to me about it. When I ask—as gently as I can possibly fucking ask—why she's crying, she just says she doesn't know why, it must be hormones.

This morning, I don't have to ask why. I know why. There's another damn picture of Ashlynn and I on the Internet.

This one is recent, and innocent, just misconstrued. At home in Atlanta, grocery shopping. Kat was there, too, probably right out of the shot. If I remember correctly, Ashlynn and I were bickering over why she had just put my instant oatmeal packets back on the shelf and was forcing us to get that gross steel cut oatmeal instead. She was reminding me that Ollie was visiting us this weekend, and if I ate the sugar-laden, overly processed oatmeal with the little candy dinosaur eggs in it, that he would want to eat the sugar-laden, overly processed oatmeal with the little candy dinosaur eggs in it, and I was remarking that if they'd just let him have the damn Japanese gene therapy so his pancreas worked right, then he could have the sugar-laden, overly processed oatmeal with the little candy dinosaur eggs in it from time to time, like every other kid. Then she reminded me that Ollie is her son, and Leed's son, and Ben and Tamara's son, and I'm not the King of the World and sometimes you just have to accept the limitations of nature.

She was smiling sweetly as she delivered her reminder to mind my own goddamn business, and I was smirking at her when I replied that she was just a hippie hypocrite because nature did not supply her with her recently restored rack which she bought after nursing her daughters.

She got really mad and told me I was way out of line to say something like that in the middle of the grocery store. She turned on Kat, accusing her of sharing personal information. Kat laughed at her and said anyone with eyes could see she'd had a boob job last summer.

It's true. I had never really been aware that breast feeding could change a woman's figure so much, but I guess because Ashlynn worked really hard to feed both Lyra and Lucy, she burned a ton of calories. She got super thin for about a year there and by then end, she had lost most of her formerly voluptuous chest, too. Then right before bikini season last summer, Ashlynn was mysteriously away at a "retreat" for a few days, and she looked a little different when she came back.

I'm not a creep that leers at my sister-in-law or anything, but it was hard to miss. Also hard to miss was the way Leed seemed irritated with her when she returned. They had a big fight, and he stayed at Matt's for a couple of nights. That's when Kat confessed that Ashlynn hadn't told Leed, or even Kat for that matter, what she was doing before she did it. Leed rightfully loses his shit when Ash keeps things from him, especially anything involving her health. And she knew damn well he wouldn't want her to do that, because of the anesthesia and her TBI. Also probably because he just doesn't like synthetic shit, no matter how fucking good it looks pumped into Ash's boobs.

Eventually he got over it, because it was what she wanted to feel good about herself, and really, that's all Leed ever wants. For Ashlynn to be happy.

So yeah. This picture on the Internet isn't some cutesy flirtation. It's Ashlynn being her condescending self that takes the high road when she wants to preach about natural health, but totally caves to the LA standard of beauty when it comes to her appearance. And me calling her out on it like always, because frankly, it irritates me that Kat feels insecure about her looks as compared to Ashlynn, when Ash spends way more time on herself than Kat does.