Shovelin’ It In My Piehole

Sergei was sick. Boy-child has a viral cold. Girl-child has a bacterial cold.

I have all three in combination.

I feel like total and utter crap, and am apparently making up for all my past sins by being at work with what feels like a head run over by a cement mixer, a chest full of jello, a nose like a hose, and a wee bit of dizziness that’s not even fun, not even like the most lamest high I ever got off homegrown weed.

Why don’t I go home? Why? Dear jeebus at the bowling alley, WHY?

Because, as a mom, as a working gal with limited sick days, who works at a company with an HR manager who’s never taken an HR course and has all the sympathy of a python, it’s because…I have to save my sick days for the kids.

Because, as luck would have it, any illness they get lasts for 2 days at least, and the two kids are never sick at the same time, which means I take two days off on week 1, and two days off on week 2, and when I’m finally sick on week 3, well, that’s just too damn frickin’ hella bad, innit?

I’m inhaling tea, and shoving Halls up my nose, and craving foods that, being a dutiful Atkins-maven I shouldn’t be eating.

But.

This morning Girl-child’s leftover brown sugar cinnamon Poptart looked pretty good. So I ate it.
And then I had some cheese (which will cry havoc with my phlegm, but faaack it)
And then some crackers, oh, yummy salty things.
And I have some BBQ pork rinds somewhere….

There’s a lovely salad in my lunch bag ready with tuna and veggies and it should be really good, and healthy, and make me feel like a billion bucks.

There’s also candy bars and chips in the vending machine in the Break Room.

Guess what my body’s craving?

No Ads, No Pixies

(I totally ganked the title from Rob Helpy-Chalk’s site. Sorry, and thanks, Rob.)

I finished my school library duty this morning, jumped in my car to get my ass to work, and popped on the radio.

(Which is something I don’t do often…the radio, I mean…as the morning and afternoon din of kids in my car is really all the stress I can stand. When it’s just me, in the car, quiet, no shouting, no kvetching, no music, well, that’s about as close to meditation as I get nowadays.)

So where was I? In my car. Flicked the radio on, and…”Bum bum bum ba da da bum… Here comes your maaaaaaan, here comes your man!“

I don’t know much about the Pixies, other than their lead singer was Frank Black/Black Francis. But I DO know that song is driving me CRAZY right now, it won’t leave my head, even when I clicked on a Yahoo article about Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo heading back to Harvard and “Beverly Hills” started echoing in my head. But as soon as I closed my browser, BANG!...”Here comes your maaaaaaaan!” is rolling around in there.

Local University has the best college radio station around, mostly alternative stuff, some specialty shows that knock my socks off. They like the Pixies. So I’m pretty much doomed to have this song in my head for a while.

I guess it could be worse. I could have 'Hollaback Girl' in my noodle-noggin.

(“Here comes your maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!”)

Brains!

I have to make snacks for the Boy-child’s school Halloween party next week. And me being me, I want them to be gross. Fun. But Gross above all.

Problem is, the only ideas I’ve seen are for diddly-flippin’-squat for H’ween fun food, the new thing is geeking about spending 5 minutes to decorate the top of a cupcake to look like a vampire (while the adults think it’s ‘cute’, the kids don’t care, they just eat the frosting and throw the rest away).

So far the idea bin is limited to:

** Cupcakes with orange frosting and plastic spiders
** “Witches fingers”, made by cutting knuckle-lines in a string cheese and cutting a green fingernail from a pepper and sticking it on the end
** “Brains”…red jello with fruit inside
** Black and orange tortilla chips and ‘bloody’ salsa

FAAAACK. I’m not motivated by ANY of these. I need help, people! Pretend you’re eight years old. What would make you go home from your school Halloween party and tell yer mom, “We had the grossest thing at the party today…it was SO COOL!” (Or whatever the kids say nowadays.)

Short of feeding the little waifs REAL calves brains, I mean.

Cake Is Just An Excuse For Frosting

Victoria’s Secret sent me two gift certificates a few weeks ago:
One for free panties
One for $10 off any purchase for the month of October, as a birthday present to myself

Here’s the thing…I don’t usually wear lingerie, as such.

I wear bra and panties during the day, and sometimes even a slip if I absolutely must. But the whole teddy thing? The whole camisole and matching thong thing? The bustier and garter thing? Uh. No. Not anymore.

It’s more a matter of convenience. I sleep naked, except for when the Crimson Permanent Assurance sails for a week or so. If I went to bed wearing a teddy, for example, it’d stay on me for all of, oh, 12.5 seconds before Sergei ripped it off to ravage me. I can’t very well prance around the house in a merry-widow and fishnet stockings, either, ‘cause I’m pretty sure it would burn the eyes out of my children and cause a lifetime of therapy bills. And most thongs, sorry, butt-floss doesn’t sit well with me.

A few years ago when I lost the post-post-post-pregnancy weight, I sorted through all my clothes and donated the ‘fat line’ to charity. I also (gasp!) donated most of my delicate lacy underthings. While I kept a few key pieces (garters, stockings, a few corset/teddy things), the rest just went away, the spoils of being a married mother of two, and I have yet to pull out any of the lingerie I did save. I don’t think Sergei would mind if I did jump him whilst wearing that fetching black thing in the back of my closet (as long as I don’t try it when there’s a football game on), but it wouldn’t make the sex any better, and you have to hand-wash that stuff anyway to get the stains out, so it’s really more of a bother.

However. I will still go to Victoria’s Secret for the panties, something silky. And maybe they have a nice strappy top I can wear under a dress jacket, or some nice lotion, or maybe a feather boa. If only they had some lovely chocolates….

And then there’s cake.

I have to make cupcakes for both kids’ school Halloween parties next Monday, and after spending several evenings looking at recipes and decorating ideas, I realized that by and large, I don’t like cakes. They’re too full of air. They don’t give you that long-lasting ‘bang!’ of flavour, it’s more like a quick “ooh!” and then it’s done. You have to eat three or four cupcakes just to feel like you’ve eaten something substantial. And let’s not fool ourselves, we’re really only in it for the frosting, that lovely, sickly-sweet frosting.

The only exception to the cake rule are cakes that aren’t cakes. Like dump cake. Or fruitcake. Or my mom’s homemade oatmeal cake, which is heavier than my car, but absolutely delish.

I may skip ‘school party’ tradition and make brownies in cupcake liners and put frosting on them. And plastic spiders. The kids are only in it for the toys anyway, and that makes more frosting for me!

I Don’t Believe In Peter Pan, Frankenstein, or Superman

My brain-deadness has resulted in no poetry on this Friday. Again. I suck. Very well. (I truly did kick ass at our meeting last night, so insomnia does have benefits.)

On the way to work this morning, with absolutely no caffeine in my system, I happened to be mesmerized by a very large horse trailer blocking the road in front of me. I mean, this thing was 2 car lengths long, PLUS it was attached to one of those big honkin’ pick-em-up trucks that look like giant penises on wheels, complete with bulbous protuberances of back wheels taller than me, and I ain’t short. This giant caravan was attempting to turn a corner into a 2-way, 4 lane road, and completely blocked all four lanes of traffic. Uh…nice. I happened to be the first car behind this monstrosity after it turned. It actually hauled ass, I mean in a speed-way, which was odd given that the truck and trailer together weighed as much as the state of Rhode Island.

Anywho, down the street, the light turns red, we all stop. I snap out of my sleepy reverie to notice that the trailer is moving. Not just moving, I mean, “Don’t-come-a’knockin’-if-the-van-is-rockin” moving. Rhythmically, side to side. And I hear banging, like hooves on the inside, but not unsteady, more like music.

Rock, rock, rock, BANG!
Rock, rock, rock, BANG!
Rock, rock, rock, BANG!

I think the horses were having sex. I have no other explanation for it. Nothing else moves like that.

Or.

They were having a party, dancing to some sort of jams that humans can’t hear, crackin’ open bottles of oat-beer, smokin’ the doobies, flirting, and setting couches on fire.

Well, maybe not the fire thing.

And I’m pretty sure it was sex. I know my sex.

Rock, rock, rock, BANG!


Have a good weekend, y'all.

As a Teenager, I Had a Pair of Panties That Said "Thirst-Day", Alongside a Picture of a Tall Glass of Lemonade

The days are morphing into each other. I've spent every night for the past whatever nights researching for my School Board Kindergarten Study Group. I've called and met with teachers, the local planning committee, school districts in and around Michigan, a local developer, and sent/received hundreds of emails. Oh yeah, and there's also the 40-hour a week paid job, and two kids with busy schedules, and a husband I'd like to bonk more often. Sleep? I don' need no stinkin' sleep.

Tomorrow morning and early afternoon, Thursday by my calendar, the Girl-child's kindergarten class has their first field trip, which I will chaperone. We're going to a pumpkin patch, where we will traipse around a glorious viney field to pick our own orange balls of sunshine, go on a hayride, make autumn crafts, eat box lunches, snarf donuts and cider, and generally celebrate autumn. And then Girl-child spends the rest of the day at school and I have to go to work. Later that night I have my Study Group meeting, where I plan to kick ass with my awesome presentation and myriad of statistics.

And my butt just keeps a-spreading ever wider as I use my brain for good and not my body for pleasure. I want to stop thinking so much and just go swimming or something. My legs have atrophied from all this computer business, I tell you what.

Soon I hope to visit your blogs and chat, but for now, I just hope I can keep it together for a few more days....

Double Oh

So this guy is the new Bond. James Bond.

IMHO, it should have been my new boyfriend, Jason. I saw him in ‘The Transporter’ last night and was immediately smitten. So weird that I would see his doppelganger in the morning and get such a lovely response to him in comments, stumble across a movie of his in the evening and then fall totally in lust by bedtime. That's the fastest I've ever found a boyfriend, hands-down.

So, Miss Moneypenny, questions:

1) Who would you have picked as the new Bond?
2) Who’s your favorite all-time Bond? For me, hands down, Sean Connery. Roger Moore is second.
3) If you were in a Bond movie, either as a villian or as a Bond-girl, what would your name be?

(Oh, and if you’re here looking for the sex talk today, all you get is Bond. Sergei did post about my nipples today, though, which is making me blush as we speak.)

Every Want Rebounds From Such A Perfect Curve

We women have the most curious hormones. Truly. I wish you men could feel this stuff, it’s amazing. (Yes, sometimes it sucks, but it’s still amazing.)

The female cycle rotates like this:

Day 1, Period
Day 15, Ovulation
Day 29, Period
Day 43, Ovulation

And so on and so on unless you get pregnant, then it’s something like:

Day 1, Period
Day 15, Ovulation
Day 29, Freaking out, where is period?
Day 30, Buy Pregnancy Test. Freak out some more.
Day 31, Puke, puke some more, repeat for several months

Right before The Crimson Permanent Assurance sails, around Day 27, I become a guy…a 16-year-old, horny, quivering mass of pent-up sexual energy. It would be pathetic if it weren’t so much fun. I hands-free-masturbate in the car, continuously. I masturbate in the shower with repeated offenses. I’ve even been known to wrangle Sergei into a several-hours-long sex-fest.

Epic.

(Daydreaming…sighing….)

Anyway. The same is true right after the Crimson sails out of port, say, Day 8. The rush of fresh hormones feels something like inching up the crest of a roller coaster, that first big hill, where you know very soon you’re gonna drop and the world will race under you and your heart can’t beat fast enough and you scream “AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Your seat gets wet, not with sweat, buck-o, and your body tenses and you can’t stop that feeling like you’re gonna die but if you get off it’ll be a big letdown.

‘Course with this new fountain of youth comes fantasy. Driving to work this morning, I saw a young man cross the street, backpack slung casually over one shoulder, sleepy sexy look on his face. He looked like this guy from the Guy Ritchie films. Who I never realized I had a crush on til this morning. Mr. Dangerous-Cute saw me as I passed, I made that little sound we women make when we see something yummy. Now I’m at work with my pump primed and can’t do anything about it. It’s Day 8, people. I’ve already handed over my ride ticket, I’m strapped in and the car is inching it’s way up to the top, and my hands are in the air, waving.

Sergei, honey, eat well today, because later, when the kids are in bed, I’m gonna throw you down and pour sex all over you.

Your Regularly Scheduled Program Will Not Be Seen Today

‘Poetry Friday’ will continue next week.

In the meantime:

1) Chunk O Funk is back, and I’m wet with anticipation. (I'm still convinced that he and Sergei were separated at birth.)

2) Dinosaur comics are frickin’ cool.

3) Rathergood has a new song and video, “Soupy George”. Play this 6 or 7 times and you WILL crave soup for lunch. And ska. And subversive billboards.

4) Sergei has a cast list out for the real-life drama that is his mother and family. And I can verify, it’s all true.

5) What would the world be like if all our sexual thoughts and fantasies and lewd urges ran like a ticker-tape across our foreheads? Would we think dirtier thoughts? How would we create cleaner ones (and would we want to)? Would we wear terrycloth headbands to cover up the fact that we think that guy who works at the video store has a really cute butt and we’d like to bonk him in the middle of the ‘Fantasy and Sci-Fi’ stacks?

Buy a pumpkin this weekend, folks, and some hard cider. Tis the season!

And Then She Wouldn’t Shut Up

I’m not a “ranter”.

I don’t “rant”, as a rule.

Or.

Perhaps.

I.

Do.

But today, goddammit, I’m just pissin’ vinegar. (And don’t go bustin’ my chops ‘cause the phrase is “piss and vinegar”. I really AM pissing vinegar.)

Jeebus Christo, it’s not even 10 a.m. and folks have taken it upon themselves to be the biggest pain in my lovely round ass.

Okay, so, based on this morning’s activities, here are a few rules I’m gonna send out in blog-wave form and hope they make it through some people’s thick brain bones:

1) If you’re driving your kids to school and you want to turn into the school parking lot, turn on your goddamn blinker. Otherwise, yes, you WILL freak out when I make that right turn and you decide (dumbass) that you want to turn, and don’t you dare beep your horn at me you toothless fuck.

2) Hey. Grandpa. When the light is green, that means GO! It doesn’t mean pick your butt until the light turns yellow, just to see what the car behind you does. And yes, that was me tailgating you with my car positioned so my headlights were in your side mirror. You were already blind, I didn’t do any damage.

3) Hey. Grandpa. If you’re gonna pull into the post office, PULL IN. Don’t pull halfway in, and stop as I turn in behind you, so my rear end is still in traffic. And please, decide before you turn in which lot you’re gonna pull into. You can go left, you can go right, you can go straight. Your stupid little car did a donut there, right in front of me, and I nearly lept from my car and beat you with your own cane, you insane short octogenarian.

4) School buses must, by law, stop at train tracks. Miss Van Driver, you do NOT need to stop at the train tracks. There is no ‘sympathy stopping’. They have those little gates and lights and buzzers, ya know, so you won’t be hit by those trains. USE THEM. Next time, I’ll honk at you more than once. Consider yourself lucky.

5) Whichever hormone or bodily function decided that a woman must bloat like an orca during her period must be permanently removed from my body. I’m fargin’ sick of this shite. Rilly. When I can grab two handsful of inflated flesh during my ‘monthly’, that just makes me want to go killer insane and jump immediately into menopause. Cut. It. The. Fuck. Out.

6) Caffeine must be reformulated so it doesn’t make you jittery. It just took me three tries to get that statement correct because my fingers are shaking so bad.


Got a bone to pick? Rant wid’ me.

Time to Make the Donuts

Thing One:

I saw a train this morning, and these lyrics popped into my head:

“Driving that train, high on cocaine
Casey Jones you better watch your speed,
trouble ahead, trouble behind
and you know that notion just crossed my mind.”

--I’m not a Deadhead, and had to look the lyrics up.
--I’ve never done cocaine, but I imagine it to be something like the day I drank 3 cups of double-strength coffee at work, couldn’t shut up, bumped into cube walls which I swore were people, and physically crashed in the afternoon, snoring, at my desk.
--I think Amtrak is friggin’ cool.
--But I don’t want no boy named Casey Jones to drive my Amtrak all hepped up on dope. M’kay?


Thing Two:

I’ve been lying to myself. (I ain’t missing you at all!)

No, all song lyrics aside, I’ve always thought that summer was my favourite season.

But really? Really, truly? It’s autumn.

Autumn and I can still wear shorts some days and get away with it.
Autumn and I can wear my new mini-cord cords with a cute lil unbuttoned sweater thing and look fiiiiine.
Autumn and I can wear those doggie sock/slippers at night, which makes the kids giggle.
Autumn and I can drink fresh apple cider and still-warm donuts.
Autumn and I can take the kids for walks looking for ‘perfect’ fallen leaves to decorate my workplace.
Autumn and I can make chili and soup and snuggle on the couch with the kids.
Autumn and I can rub my hands on Sergei’s chest when he unzips his hoodie for me. (raor!)
Autumn and I can feel cool again.
Autumn and I can smell Thanksgiving a-cookin’.
Autumn and I buy the first Christmas present.
Autumn and I get along.


Thing Three:

Did I tell you about the time I set my bra on fire? While I was wearing it? I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.


Thing Four:

I have to make desserts tonight for work tomorrow. AGAIN. Last time you were all so nice about sharing your quick dessert ideas with me, so I’ll put the word out again. Help! I don’t feel like baking! What do I bring? I need 3 or 4 things.


Thing Five:

Time to make some double-strong coffee and see how high it can get me.

A Sale of Two Titties

It really is Tits Out Tuesday!

I had my mammogram today before I had breakfast. Listen, ladies, mammograms are really no big deal. Unless, I guess, you’re a 32AA. All you do is flop your breast-o-licous boobie onto a little glass plate, whilst another glass plate squishes your breast into a really amazing flesh-coloured pancake. It doesn’t hurt. It’s pressure, sure, but no more than a really randy lover would apply when trying to hoist your ass onto the washing machine for a little ‘basement bonking’. Do not fear the mam’gram!

The lab tech and I had a really animated conversation about kids and school and work while she was fondling my breasts. She took 4 ‘grams…right breast on the side, right breast top/bottom, left breast on the side, left breast top/bottom. You lift your little milky puppy up there on the glass (which has ‘length’ lines of where your nipple lands relative to the chest-wall-side of the glass…oh yes, I am BIG!) and she gently (but firmly) lifts and adjusts your breast to show its ‘good side’, moves your arm to the appropriate handle, moves your chest wall where she needs it, makes you hold your breath…buzz…pop!...and it’s done.

Later this morning I had an EKG on my murmuring heart. Which was really scary and cool. She put those round Frankenstein-clip patches on my chest, and she had a little teeny tiny ultrasound wand that she pressed against and under and on top of my left breast and around and around my heart.

I watched my heart beat. I saw the chambers. I saw little flaps flutter up and down. I freaked out a little, thinking that this was what kept me alive. It scared me worse than the mammogram.

Now I have to torture the guys at work with my tales of toplessness this morning! (Oh, I hope to make them blush, I hope I hope I hope.)

On the way to the mam’gram this morning, I passed by a party store in a tough part of town. The front windows were covered with ads for all sorts of nasty products…cigarettes…beer…condoms…and ice cream. ICE CREAM??? WTF? That’s not nasty! That’s glorious creamy nirvana! Were they insinuating that ice cream was just as bad as smokes and beer? Or were they inviting you to ‘bring the kiddies’ when you came for your fix? Miller Lite…Camels…Trojans…and Banana Fudge Ripple. Hmmm…one of these things is NOT like the others….

Sergei and Pisser did this thang (maybe *that* “thing”, but hang on), where you go to google and type in “(your name) needs”, and post five results. I took the first 5. I like 'em. Especially number 4:

1) Mona needs our help.
2) Mona needs a leg operation!
3) MONA needs to be adapted to the designer, who often uses cases, scenarios, and sketches on paper.
4) Mona needs to be so triumphantly nasty that (like Cruella De Vil) just the sight of her makes you eager to see what she’ll do next.
5) When Mona needs to see a doctor, the latter needs to be alerted that the person he/she will see is somewhere between the two sexes.

Yesh. Triumphantly nasty. That’s what I aspire to. And making you eager.

Perhaps I Should Wear Pasties??

Tomorrow morning, people will be a-lookin’ at my breasts, and touching them, and havin' a gay ol' time wid 'em.

After I drop the kids off at school, I go for a mammogram. (Don’t worry, it’s just routine.)

Then I get to go have an EKG and whatever else on my heart murmur. (Don’t worry, it’s just routine.)

And then, I get to come to work and relate the whole breast squishing, breast touching ordeal to the guys in my department, who titter like 8-year olds when I say the word ‘breast’.

BREAST!

Tee-hee-hee…!

But don’t worry, it’s just routine.

Poems About Aging

Today is my birthday.

And given that I am "of a certain age", I will not disclose the number of years I've been alive, but, rather, how utterly difficult I am to buy presents for. What did I ask Sergei to get me? An eggbeater. One of those old-fashioned kinds where you hold a handle and turn a crank and two beaters just whirr away like crazy mad insane.

'Cause they're frickin' awesome!

Oh, and I think a couple movies. And to have my car cleaned out, which smells like a barn, but only because two children have littered it with food and soccer-cleat-mud and used kleenex and smushed M&Ms and I believe, maybe, some bodily fluid that it's really better that I NOT know about.

I'm a few years older than Sergei. I robbed his cradle, which, so far, has kept me from getting laugh lines but didn't help much in the 'breasts-going-south' endeavor. Which doesn't phase Sergei at all, but which I secretly bitch about every time I see my nakedness in the mirror. I can't even talk them into moving up half an inch, I mean, c'mon, I'm not talking balancing the federal budget, I'm talking about nips that point upwards!

So I talk to them. Something like:
Me: Hi! How's about coming north for the winter? It's cool here! You'll be all perky!
Breasts: (snore)

So getting older sucks, blah blah blah. The guys at work decided that our department would use the never-used "Department Fun Day" option to celebrate my day. We're all leaving at Noon, going out for lunch...and BEER, dammit!...and then to a movie, on the company credit card. We'll prolly see "Serenity", cause I loves me a good sci-fi, and I'm in the IT department, and us geeks loves us some futeristic special fx. And naked chicks. (Hey, I can appreciate a nice set of knockers.) I thought briefly about taking them to see this, or even this, both of which I really want to see, but decided, nah, laser guns and dialogue a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer would be killer.

Today's Poetry Friday will be about, of course, aging. 'Cause I just couldn't get all hepped up about writing about my 'gina. That'll be next week.

So, without further delay:

Poems About Aging


With All Apologies to AA Milne:

It’s a very funny thought that, if I’d been this smart at age twenty-two,
I’d be a sooper-genius, president, millionaire computer-guru.
And that being so (if my brain were now to regress),
I’d be drunk and passed out on the lawn, naked, and a mess!


With All Apologies to Emily Dickenson:

There is another girl,
Ever sexy, spunky, slim;
And there is another girl,
Though she has a brain quite dim;
Never mind the coeds, Sergei,
Never mind the open sorority blinds –
Here is a womanly body,
Whose legs are ever open.
Here is a sexpot,
With her hands forever gropin’
In my luscious body,
I throb and long for thee,
Come away from the window
And come into me!


With All Apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning and any Portuguese out there:

I thought once how David Bowie had sung
Of the golden years, the sweet and calming years,
When a mate beside you in his rocking chair appears,
Bearing gifts of Depends, Ensure, an iron lung;
And, as I licked my lips sensuously with my tongue,
I saw, in the crowd of actors there,
A young man in a flannel shirt, with dark brown hair,
And into his strong arms my body was flung.
He was so young! Right away I was struck
By the fact that I could have been his babysitter,
In years past, and what fortunate luck
To feel my pink snoopy all a-twitter –
“Hey”, I said, “How’s about a fuck?”,
His answer rang – “Yes! You’re a horny critter!”


With All Apologies to W.B. Yeats:

Turning and turning in my big warm bed,
The ears do not hear the alarm clock;
Things fall apart; my waistband cannot hold;
My heart is beating like an overworked hummingbird,
The morning sun is loosed, and everywhere
The comfy cushions call to me;
My best intentions don’t mean a damn, while the worst
Are eaten up with gobs of whipped cream.

Surely some breaking point is at hand;
Surely the Second Alarm Clock is near my hand.
The Second Alarm Clock! Hardly are those words out
When a sharp image out of Sears and Roebuck
Catches my attention; somewhere, in the appliance section,
A clock with a loud buzzer and a George Jetson flip-up spring,
An earth-shattering din that will shake my old bones awake,
Is going to be charged on my credit card, while at the same time
I order the softest pillows and comforter available.
The nighttime comes again, but now I know
That eight hours of dreamless sleep
Would probably give me nightmares anyway,
And what rough sleep, its hour being far too late,
Slouches to the computer to blog the night away?


With All Apologies to both Simon AND Garfunkel:

Slow down, you move too fast,
I’m an old lady, my butt’s vast,
Just shufflin’ down the grocery aisle
Lookin’ for bread and feelin’ creaky.

Hey butcher,
Whatcha choppin’?
Wanna join me, do some shoppin’?
Ain’t ya got no mush for me?
Dootin’ doo-doo
Feelin’ creaky.

Got no work to do
No bladder control.
I’m powdered and perfumed and ready to roll.
Let the bagboy take my load out for me,
Bunions, I love you,
All is creaky.


Go ahead, have some cake tonight, or perhaps a lovely slice of flan, and wonder if the fountain of youth would taste like kool-aid or grain alcohol!

The Uneven Parallel Boobies

Human beings are supposed to be somewhat symmetrical, side to side. The left side of your body should match the right side, vice-versey, and the equator-divider ends up being the septum under our nose, cleavage, that little line of hair on a guy that extends all the way down to the promised land, oh lawd I love that.

But see, nature is a cruel bitch. She don't care much for symmetry, when it gets right down to it. So we end up with a salt-and-pepper duo instead of two perfect pink coconutty sno-balls made from some damn fine machine.

I remember reading some study that took pictures of peoples' faces, divided them exactly in half, and mirror-reflected each half to see what an entirely symmetrical representation of each side of the face would be. In each case, they found that most people, when divided down the middle, looked like two different people, or at least one happy person and one pretty pissed-off person. Only freaky people like models, who had near-perfect symmetry, looked gaw-geous both ways.

My boobs.

Oh, sorry, did I forget to segue? (NOT "Segway", I can't think of a more useless thing to own in Michigan.)

Ahem.

Speaking of symmetry, or I guess, the lack thereof, I was thinking about my boobs tonight. They were just sittin' here, I looked down to say 'hi', and I realized something. My breasteses are more symmetrical now than when I was a young lass.

Back in the teen and college years, my right breast was smaller than my left. And I'm right-handed. Maybe I squished that sucker down by writing too much?

Or I was turning into an arrow-shooting Amazon Woman?

Anyway, then I got older, and popped out two kids, gaining and losing weight several times, breast feeding, etc. Some wonderful hormone musta been tripped along the way, and now I can hold a breast in each hand and cup them exactly the same. I have no gaps in one side of my bra. They're real, and they're spectacular.

Is this just me?

Does anyone else have a bigger goody-bag on one side, a distended yarble, somethin'? Can anyone else but you tell?

Oh, yeah, and speaking again of boobs, go donate some money to Breast Cancer Research at the Boobie-Thon. Both Lisa and Orange have submitted photos, and QWMaine, and...wow! All I can say is...hhhhuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhh. (Didn't get my photo up in time. May just have to donate this year, the 'Thon ends this week.) Anyone else with 'Thon photos?

Little Pig, Little Pig, Let Me In

About ten years ago, the president of my company decided to move us from our ramshackle office space into an actual office building, being constructed just for us.

In a SWAMP.

It sank into the swamp! So he built another one! That one burned, fell down, and sank into the swamp! (Enough Python, sorry. It never sank, it never burned. BUT, since it’s in a swamp, and the construction guys were obviously high, the floors have buckled. The concrete floors. The IT department has an ‘uphill’ and a ‘downhill’. Trim is skewed. And the water fountain smells like the farm across the street. Yeah. Nice.)

The swamp is right by a railroad track. A busy railroad track. Located just south of two other busy railroad tracks. Morning commutes are sometimes peppered with 15, 20-minutes waits for one, two, THREE frickin’ slow-movin’ freight trains. You can always recognize the poor unfortunate souls who happened to encounter multiple trains on any given morning. They’re the ones with empty coffee cups and pointed sticks, plotting to descend on the train station.

This morning I was cruising to work, southbound, crossed the two north tracks, and started over the third track near my office. I noticed northbound traffic was backed up, due to a train I’d just missed. (Hooray!)

BUT.

The northbound folks were not in a jolly mood, nosirree bob. Even though they’d only had to contend with ONE stinkin’ train. They’d drunk all their coffee and were sharpening their sticks. And they were bitchy.

I had to turn left, cross both left and right northbound lanes, to get to the parking lot at work. My blinker was on. The car behind me had their blinker on (my friend K). Those pissed-off train-delayed folks would NOT LET US GO. They kept bumper-to-bumper like they were frogs a-humpin’ in Spring. I sat there a good five hours (okay, maybe 10 minutes, really), as they crept forward, being all “no cuts!” and pretending they didn’t see me. They were moving, the light was green, but they took out their commute anger on us.

Hello!
Let me cross!
I hafta get to work!
Put down that gun!
I’m unarmed!

Finally, FINALLY, the woman in the left lane stopped. I inched forward. The woman in the right lane stopped. I sped through, into the parking lot, and gave them a ‘thanks’ wave.

My friend K drove in after me. I saw her inside.

K: Can you believe the traffic out there?
Me: No, man, that was insane!
K: Know what I did when they finally let us through?
Me: No, what?
K: I smiled and waved and yelled, “Thanks, Bitches!”

I’m gonna try that next time.

Update: After posting this blog, I clicked on Blogger's "Blogs of Note" for today (Tuesday), called "The Boy Who Heard Music". It's Pete Townshend! FAAAACK! Sweet, sweet nirvana!

Stop Making Sense

"And you may find yourself
in a beautiful house
with a beautiful wife
and you may ask yourself --
well? how did I get here?"

Okay, we're none of us kids anymore, right? We're not OLD, but we can wipe our own butts and buy the toilet paper.

When, exactly, did we grow up?

My problem is this...I still feel like I'm sixteen years old.

Now I'm not sixteen...my rack is bigger, my ass is bigger, I have more money in my bank account (not a whole lot more, but still), I can talk trash and I can talk with authority. I can vote. I can drink. And all that's cool, but I still can't believe sometimes that I'm not sitting at the kids table at Thanksgiving.

Case in point...back in the Spring, I rallied with some other parents and teachers to keep our school district's full-day kindergarten program open. For lots of reasons that I'll email you if you REALLY want to know. And we won, at least for this year. BUT now the School Board wants more data...hard research data...that supports our position. I've been put on a study panel to do just that. Tonight was our first meeting.

I felt like an imposter.

So I'm sitting with 6 other grownups at the house of one of the school board members. She's a well-respected older professor at Local University. I'm also surrounded by older, retired teachers, an early elementary educator, and one mom too shy to speak. There's one older male, who chimes in with points I consider close to mine. And we're sitting in the professor's house, I mean "mansion", in one of the better neighborhoods, while she serves us imported snacks, and we're talking about kindergarten, our experiences with it, the research some of us have done, the anecdotal stuff that has to come out. I clarify points, I give information, I pull out piles of research and refer to them. I volunteer for major projects. I listen and people listen to me. We're on slightly different sides of the fence, but are open-minded enough to be supportive of all sides of the argument.

We marvel at the fact that every one of us is wearing Birkenstocks.

Yes. We're that crunchy.

The meeting winds down and I make some lame joke at the end, as I stand with my shoulder briefcase bursting, something like, "And to think, when I went to kindergarten, all we were concerned with was the boys who liked eating paste!" And everyone laughed.

I drove home, and as I sit here typing, knowing I have days and days of research and phone calls and survey writing and investigating and number-crunching to do, along with being a wife and mother of two busy kids and working full-time and hoping to get more than 4 hours sleep tonight, I'm wondering:

Damn! Am I a grownup??? Faaaaaack!!! How exactly did that happen???

I think I gotta stop!
I should take my tank shirt off and run down the street shaking my boobies at everyone!
I should get drunk!
I should stay up late and call in sick to work!
I should play angry German techno music really frickin' loud out my car windows!
I should break some beer bottles and pee in someone's bushes!
I should tell the School Board to kiss my pink ass!

I should ...I should....

What?

Oh hell, who am I kidding? I'm too tired for that stuff. Really. And pretty soon I want to check on the kids yet again just so I can kiss their sweaty snoring heads. And I want to spoon with Sergei. All night. And wake up before anyone else, stumble downstairs, listen to the quiet. I want to affect change. I want to be known for being a hard worker. I want to be an expert. I want to ensure that kids here have every opportunity for education.

But.

I will still flash my boobies. From time to time.