Mamalama Ding Dong Virtual Book Tour Stop #12

I’m stop #12 for Ayun Halliday’s virtual book tour of Mamalama Dingdong. I was thrilled to be asked to be a part of this 31 day virtual book tour. Before receiving the email and book I had never heard of Ayun but boy am I glad they found me and my little ole’ blog

While reading the book, I kept coming back to how glamorous her life sounded while living with 2 kids in New York City. She makes me want to leave for NYC today and lug my kids around just so I can feel glamorous too!

I think I love Ayun Halliday already and I think you should go buy her book Mamalama Ding Dong (Big Rumpus in U.S.).

But if you are not convinced by that statement alone then I suggest you keep on reading as I have included my favorite excerpt from the book and my interview with Ayun.

When I got to this part in the book I couldn’t stop laughing. Excerpt from Mamalama Ding Dong:

“Staying at home to raise children is like getting off the graveyard shift at Burger King with fifteen minutes to make it to my second job in the coal mines. Of course, once a week I am summoned from the mine shaft to accept the Nobel Prize, but goddamnit, I earn those. My meals, my baths, and any activity involving a pen are accomplished as best as they can with people wriggling on my lap; rooting for my breasts; requesting the millionth retelling of lurid, accidentally overheard medical anecdotes; exacting promises, puking, peeing and knocking over glasses of soy milk".

I also interviewed Ayun on a personal matter in which many of you can relate and on a recent controversy. You have got to hear her responses. They are brilliant and as usual just plain funny...

Interview With Ayun Halliday:

Petite Mommy: As a fellow work at home mom, I seem to have trouble
balancing working from home and also being a stay at
home mom, what is your viewpoint on this?

Ayun: In ways I found it easiest when my daily – and only - chance of grabbing the brass work-at-home ring was that golden hour or two when the baby conked out for his or her nap. The stinginess of those parameters helped me to focus on my work, disarming the siren songs of the phone, the Internet, and the refrigerator. By the time Milo appeared on the scene, Inky was attending nursery school, so except on holidays, weekends, vacations, and sick days, I never had to deal with another little kid sabotaging the work-potential of the baby's glorious naps. I think it also helped that I’m my own boss (or so my publishers allow me to think), i.e. there was rarely any serious temptation to hire a babysitter or plop the feral in front of the tube for hours on end, just to meet some arbitrary jive ass deadline.

Also, as far as keeping every plate in the air goes, motherhood has made me into a seriously neglectful housekeeper. What little time I had to myself in those early days, I split between the children and my writing. The children got the lion’s share. The bathroom floor got zilch. Now that I have more time both kids attend the public school across the street, I find I’m still loath to get out the mop. I figure I owe it to myself to take some of that vacation time I let pile up during the diaper and titty years. I’ve rediscovered hobbies I considered long dead, such as matinees, lunch and browsing at the Salvation Army. I love my boulevardier existence. It makes me feel like a real writer, like Wallace Shawn, somebody who probably never had to worry about squeezing the work schedule into an all-to-brief naptime. Greg and I have been lucky enough to be living off the fat of his play, Urinetown, for the past few years, but knowing that that cow could dry up any day now, I don’t want to spend all my time inside the anthill, you know? Good lord, that was like, what, three metaphors in one sentence?

Petite Mommy: And, what do you think of the controversy over the
naked breast on the recent parenting magazine, Baby
Talk?

Ayun: Remarkably, Greg scooped me on this flap! I had fallen off the grid a bit because we were on vacation when the story broke, but somehow he got wind of it and brought it up because he figured I could clear up what all the controversy was about. Like some secret woman taboo had been breached, and only one with the appropriate gear in her tackle box could make sense of it. “Is it because the breast is exposed?” he ventured, completely stumped. Good man. By now, he is completely inured to the sight of nursing friends clawing their bras aside so their babies can latch on. And if you look at that cover, that chunky-cheeked baby head provides much fuller coverage than the superfluous n’ sleazy suspender straps or carefully placed model fingers blocking the nips on the covers of Maxim, Cosmopolitan, or any of the gentlemen’s magazines clipped to the eaves of our local newsstand. I did a little research, expecting to learn that religious fundamentalists or the so-called Child-Free movement was leading the charge, but from what I can tell, much of the indignation came from Baby Talk readers! One woman said she ripped the cover off because she didn’t want her husband to see it! Okay:

I’m glad her husband ain’t the father of MY children.
I’m gladder still that I ain’t her, because it would drive me insane to live with that big of a rod up my heiner and She should consider herself lucky that she doesn’t subscribe to Bitch because there was a similar but much, much smaller brouhaha in their letters section, when the staff ran a full page ad for a sex toy store on the back cover, featuring an enormous, lifelike, and if memory serves, bright purple dildo. I recall one subscriber respectfully submitted that it wasn’t that she didn’t want her teenage son to son to know about sex – they’d moved on from where babies come from to masturbation as a normal, healthy activity – only that she’d have preferred to have some say so as to when the time was right to educate him as to the whole sub-category of vibrating, penis-shaped things that can be introduced into one’s holes for erotic recreation. The editors took this and other comments and decided to save the sex toy ads for the inside cover. Problem solved with grace and humility.

I guess what I’m saying is, I could understand the outcry if the editors of Baby Talk had placed a big silicone schlong on the cover, but I find it obscene that so many Baby Talk readers can’t handle a Western breast caught in the act of what is to me, an entirely wholesome activity. The hipMama crowd wouldn’t have batted an eyelash.

I think Baby Talk should run the exact same cover, Photoshopping a bottle in for the breast. See what that stirs up. Maybe controversy, but not "disgust". I swear to god, it makes me want to come out like a bitin' sow.

Petite Mommy: Thank you so much for your time

Ayun: No, thank YOU!

Petite Mommy: I have to say that this is probably the funniest
and most realistic mothering book I've ever read. I
think pregnant women should put down those parenting
books and pick this one up to see what being a mother
is really all about. :)

Ayun: Thank you some more! I think you should see if the Sunday New York Times would let you review books from home! Put me down for a big fat glowing reference!

I have to say that last part cracks me up every time I read it. Anyway, feel free to visit all the blogs on her virtual book tour. Ayun sure picked a great group!