Turns out, I have Control Issues. My therapist told me so.
I announced this, in my own little express-everything-verbal-processing way one night during a dinner party. The responses were various versions of 'no shit, sherlock'. John asked Stuart exactly HOW much I was paying a therapist to be told what anyone who has spent more than 5 minutes in my general vicinity knows.
My response was to ask John if HE wants to have to listen to me for one, un-interrupted, hour a week. He looked appropriately horrified and agreed I should totally go to therapy.
Laura's response, as a fellow Psychology major and verbal processor was, "I LOVE therapy!".
I do, too. Dr. Clowers' entire job is to listen to whatever I feel like talking about. He HAS to. He can't walk away, hang up or divert the conversation to be about himself. For my 50-minute hour, it is ALL ABOUT ME.
Me, and my control issues.
That's the part of therapy that kinda sucks...somewhere in that 50 minutes, HE gets to tell ME all about me.
Sometimes, that part's not so fun.
Especially since it took the good Dr approximately the same 5 minutes it takes anyone else to diagnose me: Controlling Type-A intuitive Feeling Extrovert with neurotic tendencies and a predilection for drama.
Part of me was a little disappointed. Not that I wanted to be Schizophrenic or suddenly discover I have Daddy Issues or anything, but it is a little embarrassing to admit how boring I am.
At our first appointment, Dr. Clowers (who looks like a mix between Dr. Niles Crane from Frazier and George Costanza from Seinfield), did the traditional interview, searching for some past traumatic experience or biological cause for my visit. I have nothing. The only cause for my koo-koo-bird behavior is me. Sadly, they don't have a pill for that.
Instead, I'm supposed to accept the fact that I can't control everything and embrace what life brings me. Ugh. Sometimes I don't LIKE what life brings me.
I had signed up for therapy when Stuart had 2 weeks left of his 17-week Police Academy Training. This training meant that he wasn't really home for those 17 weeks. He DID have weekends off and sometimes made it home for dinner, but basically life was up to me. That wasn't the problem. I LIKE life to be up to me. What I didn't like was that his Academy schedule and future schedule were NOT up to me. We control freaks don't like that. If I don't know his schedule, how am I supposed to schedule his life? When do doctor and dentist appointments happen? When can I get my nails done? How am I supposed to sign him up for the Dad's Dance during the girl's Dance Recital if I don't know if he can attend?
But my Issues didn't start with Academy. It just brought about a flare-up, the way too many margaritas on the rocks with salt will give me a canker sore on my tongue. Oh no, the Control Issues aspect of my Type-Aness go way, way back. I--and those who have the dubious fortune of being a part of my life--have tried to 'cure' (which Dr. Clowers has informed me is just another aspect of my trying to 'control' things) them using a variety of methods.
Let's take a look at college; a time when I was both rewarded for my Controlling nature (I ALWAYS managed my time and assignments adeptly) and discovered my penchant for drama. I was a double Major: Psychology and English Literature. I minored in Crew and earned a third Major in a hot fellow rower named Stuart. Being a Psych/English major allowed me to spend college immersing myself in my two favorite pastimes; reading about and studying the causes of drama. By studying them, I figured I could cure them...ie, CONTROL them for others. Nothing makes me and my fellow control-freaks happier than controlling the lives of others.
Some people really need a little dose of control. Like the guy on my internship caseload who had a true love for fish. Not the catching of fish, but the actual physical love of fish. Yup, he had sexual relations with Salmon. He was picky, too; he'd only engage in these acts with Copper River Salmon, who only run once a year, so his affair was severely limited by time. This was actually the reason he sought therapy. The man saw nothing wrong with getting off with a scaly creature of the sea but was deeply grieving the fact that his fishy-love was only available for 4 weeks in August.
Fish Guy and the discovery that I, like John, don't actually LIKE being required to listen to other people's problems all day long is the reason I didn't pursue my counseling degree. Instead, I found a different outlet for control. I now spend my days being paid to control the lives of high schoolers. I'm a popular teacher. I like to think this is due to my great lesson plans, supplemented by my keen fashion sense. I have a suspicion my popularity has more to do with my tendency to fall off my stool at least once a class period and the fact that I tell great stories. Either way, my students do exactly what I tell them, how I tell them, when I tell them. All teachers are control freaks. Well, the good ones. The rest just wander around in various stages of PTSD wondering which student programmed the class computer to only open Youtube clips.
My professional life was not the reason I sought therapy. It was the fact that my personal life seemed to be totally out of my control. I found myself crying randomly at stop signs when I didn't know if Stu would make it home for dinner. I would lose hours staring forlornly at the kitchen calendar, sharpie in hand, wishing I could fill in future events I was unable to schedule because Cop "schedules" are merely guidelines. The final straw was when I hurled my phone at the wall because the calendar option beeped to tell me that my day was, "stu at academy".
A month into therapy, I was cured. Not by Dr. Clowers, whose appointments I still enjoy, but by a brush with one of my minor psychological problems.
I have a strong phobia of pool drains.
This is not an unreasonable phobia. So many people have died by being sucked down into pool drains, some Federal Agency actually mandated that all public pools have an Emergency Shut-Off switch for their drains so the dumb-ass swimmer who gets too close to them can be rescued before the Vortex of Death caused by the drain can suck their intestines out their asshole.
See, now you're afraid of pool drains too, aren't you?
This does not hinder my life. I simply control my environment so that I do not come in contact with pool drains. This is easy to do. One, I try to avoid going in swimming pools. Two, if I must, I simply avoid the area of the drain. This is easy to do at a resort as the drain is never placed by the waterslide where my children congregate or the swim-up bar where my friends and I gather.
Drains are harder to avoid in hot tubs. Especially those nasty filter-drain things placed right above the seats where they can suck up an unsuspecting bather's hair.
My friends all know of my problem with drains. My friends are also all jackasses.
Recently, while hot-tubbing at John and Caryn's house, I got up to refill the drinks and returned to discover that they had all shifted positions. The only seat left was by the filter. This was unacceptable so I sat on John. This was not a reward for him as I have, as Brook likes to describe it, a Jamaican Ghetto Booty, which means I actually HAVE an ass, unlike all my white-girl girlfriends who have cute little no-ass asses. My ass is a result of my bone structure...meaning it's not particularly comfortable for me to sit on your lap. I ground my Jamaican booty assbones right into John's thighs--all while withholding his fresh vodka-redbull and threatening to pee on him. He quickly deposited me in the non-filter seat, retrieved his drink, and took the hair-and-gut-sucking filter/drain spot.
See, I can control grown men, too.
Except Navy SEALs. Can't control them. They're trained to resist torture, evade capture and frustrate the living fuck out of control freaks like me. Chris, my BBF (Best Boy Friend) is a Navy SEAL. I'd tell you where and how and what he's accomplished, except that then "Chris" (NOT his real name) would have to come do some Navy SEAL shit on your ass; meaning you'd be dead. Or wish you were.
Trust me. He tortured me once. It was his torture that cured me.
I was in San Diego with my girlfriend, Vern, for a Geek Fest Conference (Advanced Placement teachers; we're the Geeks who teach all those high school Geeks you made fun of back in high school. That makes us the Super Geeks who control the rest...and by the rest, I mean the 'dorks' who are now Bill Gates-type billionaires running the world while you sit around and pick lint out of your bellybutton and wonder what the hell happened to the Good Old Days when you were cool and popular.). After a long day of learning how to influence and control future world leader Geeks, V and I visited Chris.
Chris loves me. He has to. We've known each other since we were awkward teens fumbling in the backseat of his mom's car, trying to figure out what the hell to do with all our newly grown body parts and raging hormones. Such experiences either scar or bond you for life. After several discovery sessions in various dark parking lots in the Lake Tahoe Basin, we decided we were forever meant to be...friends. Our love has flourished platonically ever since.
People don't understand platonic love between two attractive members of the opposite sex. My mother thinks we're having an affair. My husband, ironically, does not. I asked once why he's not jealous of Chris (who is hot and built and has a license to kill--and the uniform to go with it). Stu's response was, "Babe, Chris knows you too well to want to sleep with you and all your issues." Huh. Not flattering. True. But not flattering.
Anyway, we visit each other often. Well, as often as our schedules co-incide. Naturally, when I found out that I would be attending a Geek Fest just 5 miles from his swanky downtown San Diego apartment, I immediately called him. He then promptly re-scheduled some massive joint-forces military training exercise in the desert and commandeered a Navy helicopter to get home in time for us to hang.
Is that love or what?
Chris has only three flaws. One is his predilection for 22-year-old blonde Twinkies. The second is his refusal to allow me to wallow in any of my issues. The other is his obsession with working out. True, it's pretty much his job to be the most physically fit, efficient killer on the planet, but that's not MY job. My job is to teach snot-nosed teenage brats--a job that takes endless stamina but has few fitness requirements beyond the ability to speed-walk to the staff lounge in time to score the free Friday donuts before the PE department scarffs them all. Still, if I want to see Chris, it has to involve some sort of physical activity. And since our early back-seat adventures proved that my favorite method of getting my heart rate up was not great for us, I'm stuck doing actual work outs with him. We compromise. I go to his gym with him and he ignores my pansy-ass workouts while we're there.
This is no run-of-the-mill gym filled with old men in tube socks and saggy women in too-tight spandex. This is the Beautiful People's fitness club where everyone wears designer fitness clothing over their spray-tanned and perfectly toned bodies. I always feel a bit like an asshole when I show up at Chris' club in my mismatched outfits from Walmart that show my actual-tan tan lines--earned while watching little league baseball and drinking too much at backyard bbqs around above-ground pools and rusted swing sets. The people at Chris' Fitness Club look like they stepped off the pages of "Shape" or "Men's Fitness". I look like I fell off the pages of "US Weekly's" Don't Section.
The best part of Chris' club is the roof. After working out, we adjourn to the club's rooftop spa/pool/hottub/bar where we soak, drink vodka martinis and watch the Padres (yes, you can look right into the Padres' stadium from the rooftop of his gym. All you see from my gym is the high school football field.) My fellow Geek Fest attendee, Vern, known as V once you've gotten 2 drinks in her, gamely attended the requisite exercise session for the fantastic reward of rooftop bliss.
I love Vern. She is a study in contradictions. For example, she teaches high school, which is about the most germ-infested environment you can find outside a middle-eastern airport bathroom, yet she's a complete germaphobe who washes her hands so often the knuckles are permanently raw. She's an actual chemist but can't mix a drink to save her life. And she has the body of a high class Vegas escort girl yet dresses like a midwestern nun. But she's quirky and funny and always willing to play straight-man to my one-woman comedy show, so we travel well.
On this evening, Chris was showing off his miraculous body and multiple tattoos in board shorts that hung precariously off his hips. I was displaying my perky silicone breasts in a tiny pink bikini. I had mixed V a few drinks already and then forced her into a little black bikini. She was looking sexy and hot. She was also drunk. For a girl who attended 4 years of undergrad and 2 separate grad schools, she can't hold her liquor any better than a freshman girl at her first frat party.
I, seasoned lush that I am, was not in any way drunk. I wasn't even buzzed, although I was working very hard to achieve some form of intoxicated state because Chris had also brought along his Twinkie Du Jour who was wearing a black thong. Her name was Crystal and she had been that month's Playboy Centerfold. She had perfect tits, a perfect ass, concave tummy and long blonde hair. I Karma-cursed this creature of perfection that the Universe would benevolently knock her up. With twins.
As we were sitting in the hot tub drinking, talking, and staring at Crystal's truly amazing cleavage, I kept scooting closer to Chris. The first time, he assumed I needed a fresh drink to help cope with being a 30-ish mother of two stuck in a hot tub with a 20-ish Bunny. He was right. Smart man bought me a double and my attitude toward Crystal greatly improved (unfortunately for her, this was after I had already Karma-cursed her. oopsies.)
The next time I scooted over to him, he asked if I was trying to hold his hand. I grabbed it and sucked on his fingers for a minute, just to see if I could make Bunny Girl jealous. That backfired when she invited me home with them for some 3-some love. I went back to sucking down my drink.
The third time I sloshed over, he grabbed my waist and plopped me on his lap, only to dump me unceremoniously back into the tub when he remembered my bony ass. This caused drunken V to squirt vodka out her nose and blurt out the reason behind my desire to be close to him. "She's afraid of the hot tub filter!!!". I shoulda Karma-cursed V too, but the vodka nose-hair burn was probably punishment enough.
Chris was appalled. Navy SEALs are not afraid of anything. Navy SEALs cannot comprehend fear. Theirs, or anyone else's.
When I very calmly and logically explained the rationale for my fear of asshole-sucking vortexes of death, his face instantly took on his 'go' look. He got in front of me, leaned in nose-to-nose and treated me to his best Commander-of-the-United-States-Special-Forces voice, "YOU CANNOT HAVE FEAR! FEAR HOLDS YOU BACK! WE WILL KILL THIS FEAR! HOOAH!"
I am a very talented woman. I can drive while applying mascara, supervise fractions while cooking dinner and choose my shoes in a dark closet. I can also remain perfectly calm in the face of an intense, drunken Navy SEAL barking orders. If I were a man, I'd ace BUDS training in record time.
I calmly sipped my drink, repositioned my boobs (to his credit, Chris' focus never wavered despite me massaging my rather fabulous, wet breasts two inches from him), and replied, "What in the world is this fear holding me back from? My dreams of becoming an Olympic Swimmer?"
This response baffled Chris. I'm certain no one has ever dared say NO to him. He leaned in closer so that we were eskimo-kissing, and barked, "WE WILL CONQUER THIS FEAR! NOW!!"
"The fuck we will," was my reply.
The sucky thing about elite soldiers--and cops, for that matter--is that they are trained to resort to violence when verbal negotiations fail.
Chris calmly took my drink, handed it to V (bitch slurped it on down and completely ignored my distress) and grabbed me around the waist. I sprang into action. I may only be 5 feet tall and 110 pounds, but I am scrappy. Added to that, I have been trained in physical resistance by someone even better than the special forces; I have been trained by toddlers.
I countered his first move with The Octopus; a frantic squirming and flailing of all limbs. A particularly strategic move since I was all wet and slippery at the time. He countered this by pinioning my arms to my sides. I went Dead Weight. While this freed me to sink back into the water, it also freed my bikini top. This momentarily distracted him--truly, my breasts ARE fabulous--enabling me to seek reinforcements.
Although Crystal looked very tempting, I felt that V was the sturdier of the two so I scooted behind her and grabbed her arms for support. I chose poorly. V dumped our drinks in the hot tub and clutched her bikini top in fear that she too may be wantonly exposed. Chris calmly lifted her aside, seized me and tossed me unceremoniously over his well-muscled shoulder. He then hauled me, topless and ass in the air, out of the hot tub.
If we had only re-kindled our high school passions at that moment, this story would have a much happier ending for me. After all, topless and ass-up is one of my favorite positions.
Instead, he marched right over to the pool and stopped at the edge. Directly by the pool drain. He set me on my feet, adroitly dodged the punch aimed at his nose and calmly instructed me to hold my breath. When I opened my mouth to tell him to fuck himself, he pinioned my arms at my sides, lifted me and jumped in.
As the water filled my gaping mouth and went up my nose, I found Zen. For the first time in my little Type-A, Control Freak life, I found acceptance for how things were. You see, I was no longer afraid we were going to be sucked down into that rectangular drain and die an agonizing death of feeling our guts be vacuumed slowly but surely out our butts. No, I did not fear we would die.
I was certain we would. And I accepted it. I embraced it. I let go of all my earthly worries and concerns. I erased my To-Do Lists and Should Lists and I Wish I Had Lists. I released my neuroses and fears and need for control.
I'm fairly certain I also released control of my bladder.
I stopped fighting, wrapped my arms and legs as tightly around Chris' body as I could and pressed my lips to his in a final farewell kiss (I didn't think I'd be seeing him in the AfterLife as he was clearly going to hell for this murder-suicide). I was, for the first time in my life, at peace.
Apparently, it takes more than a petite and phobic intoxicated woman to drown a Navy SEAL. We didn't get sucked into the drain. We didn't drown. We didn't even stay under the water long enough for drunken V and perfect-ass Crystal to pause in their conversation about the pleasure of a well-placed hot-tub jet to notice that I was having a life-altering experience. Chris simply blew air into my mouth during our final kiss, pushed off the grate on the pool drain and surfaced like a modern triumphant Poseidon with a half-naked, wet and gasping me wrapped around his body.
Again, this image would be a lot hotter if the experience had been romantic. As it was, I promptly began vomiting pool water and vodka cran onto the pool deck.
Still, I believe that this was a major learning experience for me. I learned:
1. Never trust a drunk V.
2. Navy SEALs are efficient and dirty fighters.
3. Don't cross me: I'm a mean Karma-curser: Crystal is now knocked up. With twins.
4. I should stop worrying about trying to control my emotions. The next time I feel my Control Issues flaring up, I should simply embrace them by getting drunk, naked and wet and engaging in near-death wrestling matches with hot men.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Friday, October 29, 2010
Confession: I run around like a crazy person.
Running saved my life.
No, this is not one of those Biggest Loser-type stories. I didn’t start running to get in shape and lose roughly the weight of a baby whale. I was already in great shape when I re-discovered running. Since giving birth to my second child, I’ve stayed a hard-bodied size 0 by working out at least 4 days a week—at 4 am!—consistently. I lift, stretch, do cardio, take classes. In general, I kick my little ass into shape so that it stays, well…little!
I don’t run for the great cardio. I don’t run to be slender. I don’t run because I love logging endless miles to nowhere on the treadmill at o- dark-fucking-hundred while trying to keep my iPod earbuds in my ear (I must have de-formed ears because the stupid earbuds fall out constantly). Nor do I run because I enjoy having the old men who line up on the stationary bikes behind me ogle my ass as I hit mile 3.
I run because it keeps me from being crazy.
And, as those of you who know me are well aware, I can be pretty damn crazy. Stuart warns me—and then disappears-- when I’m veering down Loony Lane. John has risked life and limb to tell me-on several occasions!-than I’m koo-koo. And Caryn, Brook and my other girlfriends are friends enough to tell me when my ass looks fat, my hair falls flat and my behavior gets too psycho.
Don’t cue the Psycho shower scene or anything here. I’m not live-alone-in-the-woods-and-make-bombs crazy. Nor am I wander-the-streets-at-night-singing-show-tunes crazy. I don’t have a scab collection—or a creepy porcelain doll collection for that matter. I don’t hear voices, I don’t believe in voo-doo and I don’t see dead people. After all, I’m a psychology major and an Intro to Psych teacher; I KNOW that kind of crazy and I know for certain that I’m not it. It’s not a well-known fact, but all psychology majors have to take all of the crazy-factor tests…I have tested positive for Type-A, neurotic perfectionist with Obsessive-Compulsive tendencies, but there isn’t any certifiable insanity in my mental make up.
I just have a lot of drama. And most of that drama is invented in my head.
It goes like this: in the course of my day, I text someone. They, for whatever reason, don’t text me back within what I consider a reasonable amount of time (basically, by the time my cell-phone goes dark). I start to wonder why. Did I offend them? Are they mad at me? Do they now hate me? Never want to see me again? Are they, 7th-grade-girl-style, sitting with all of our other friends talking smack about me? The longer it takes for them to text/call me back, the more I start to wonder and doubt.
And as I wonder and doubt, I sink into a funk. A nobody-likes-me, everybody-hates-me, guess-I’ll-go-eat-worms funk. The worst part is, the entire time I’m feeling sad and unloved, the rational part of my brain (yes, John, I do have one!) is telling me I’m being crazy. The rest of me—my Id for those fellow psych lovers out there—doesn’t really care and is certain that everyone hates me, is actively avoiding me and never wants to see me again.
This is stupid. It is irrational, annoying and unproductive. It turns my naturally positive, self-confident, kick-ass bitch of a self into a whiney, clingy, insecure, flat-chested 12-year-old girl.
I have, over the years, tried many things to stop the crazy. Therapy doesn’t help; I’m an amazingly great liar, even to my therapist. Group therapy is worse as I’m super-competitive, and so putting me in a situation where I feel compelled to compete to be Most Crazy is fairly counter-productive. I’ve read self-help books until I can spout inanities with the best day-time ‘therapists’.
The one that works best is not eating, but this is, of course, a horrible idea. The twisted Kate-logic says that, since I can’t control anything else around me, I can at least control what I eat. And no one has self-control like a functional anorexic. Not saying this is good; it’s stupid and self-destructive and wrong, but for 15 years it was my insane method of controlling my crazy.
Until I had daughters. Or rather, until my daughters were old enough to notice that sometimes Mommy doesn’t eat. Until my girlfriends all noticed and commented that I don’t eat. Until my husband caught on that weeks pass wherein I don’t eat. Yes, even amazing liars like me eventually, after 15 some-odd years, get caught. So I started eating.
Great. This helped the low-blood-sugar issues: I no longer get dizzy every time I stand up and lord knows I’m a lot less cranky. Problem is, I was still kinda koo-koo.
Until the day I accidentally bought running shoes from the janitor.
Stuart has always been a runner. He’s built like one: tall and lanky with legs that, if he shaved them and put on some pantyhose, would get him on the Rockettes’ kick line in a heartbeat. Currently, he’s training with his buddies for a half marathon. This means, among other things, that he needs new running shoes about every three months.
One afternoon, we wandered into Big Five to buy him a new pair of shoes and it was Bob, my favorite school janitor, who came over to help us. Before he retired, Bob and I were tight. We bonded over being the only Seahawks fans in Nevada (this is long before the Seahawks had even brief flashes of victory…we’re talking the 1-10 years) and the fact that Bob was always happy to kill the field mice who lived under my desk. When he retired, I lost track of Bob but missed our hallway chats.
So, in the course of catching up—and sharing our mutual disgust with all of the suddenly-Seahawks fans who have sprouted up in the recent years—Bob made a sales’ pitch to get me to buy some running shoes. I was due for a new pair of exercise shoes anyway, although I usually get cross-trainers since my cardio preferences are pretty varied. But a combination of nostalgia and a strong desire to exit the store before Jennifer knocked anything over prompted me to buy some expensive running shoes, at a ‘friend of employee’ discount instead.
The next morning at the gym I stared at the line of treadmills and thought: what the hell. Guess I could actually use these bad boys for running.
I hate running. Strange, really, since I’m a State Champion—for 3 years in a row!—track star with the Glory Days medals and still-unbroken school records to prove it. But I was a sprinter. And even back then, at the fast-and-nubile age of 16, I hated to run more than 400 meters. In fact, I think the fact that I hated running is one of the reasons I was so fucking fast: I was determined to get it over with as quickly as possible.
Since leaving the track, I’ve used various excuses as to why I work out religiously but don’t run: My ACL surgery prevents it. My asthma prevents it. My religion prevents it.
But for whatever reason, that morning I climbed on the treadmill and started to run.
God, it sucked! My ankles hurt. My stupid ACL-repaired knee hurt. My back hurt, my lungs hurt and even my right ear—where I kept having to jam the earbud back in—hurt. Somehow, I trudged through a mile at an embarrassing 12-minute pace. At one point, as I fixed the damn earbud for the millionth time, I nearly fell off (I can’t think, run and fix all at once and had to do one of those stumble-trip-grab maneuvers to avoid flying off the back of the treadmill). As soon as I hit one mile, I stopped, bent over at the waist, gasped for breath and swore that I’d never do THAT again.
And then something weird happened: I felt great. I felt loose and limber and energized. I felt sweaty and strong. And I felt…happy.
This feeling lasted all day. Caryn didn’t smile at me when I passed her in the hall that morning and I didn’t care. Brook took her customary 4 hours to text a response and I never once worried about it. Dance Mom Bitch was, well, a bitch and I just grinned at her. Never once during the day did I wonder if Person X liked me, if I’d offended Person Y, if Person Z now thought I was ugly and if Person Husband still loved me.
In short, running chased the crazies away.
The next day I ran 1.5 miles. It still sucked. It still hurt. It still kept the crazies away.
So now I run. Not every day. 3-4 times a week does the trick. I don’t run super-far, although the distance does increase as I regain the ground-eating, zen-inducing stride that I thought I had lost along with my teenage thighs, preference for blue eye shadow, and love of all things Madonna. But, if I go more than 2 days, I start to notice the crazies creeping back in. I start wondering if people like me, I start acting clingy. I stop eating.
And then, as soon as I run again, I’m fine.
I’m so addicted that today I did something to keep the crazies away that many others would define as crazy. I ran 3.5 miles on a sprained ankle. Sure it hurt. Sure, I ran funny (Caryn was running next to me and kept telling me to stop because I was limping so badly). But I HAD to run. It’d been 4 days and, like a thick, insidious fog, I could feel the crazies seeping in. So I sucked it up like any good athlete does and played—ran—hurt.
And then, as I limped through the rest of my day, I was happy and positive and carefree.
This is why I run. I run for my girls. I run for my husband. I run for my students and my friends and the people who have to interact with me for any reason. I run for my health and I run for my sanity and I run for my SELF.
I run for my life.
No, this is not one of those Biggest Loser-type stories. I didn’t start running to get in shape and lose roughly the weight of a baby whale. I was already in great shape when I re-discovered running. Since giving birth to my second child, I’ve stayed a hard-bodied size 0 by working out at least 4 days a week—at 4 am!—consistently. I lift, stretch, do cardio, take classes. In general, I kick my little ass into shape so that it stays, well…little!
I don’t run for the great cardio. I don’t run to be slender. I don’t run because I love logging endless miles to nowhere on the treadmill at o- dark-fucking-hundred while trying to keep my iPod earbuds in my ear (I must have de-formed ears because the stupid earbuds fall out constantly). Nor do I run because I enjoy having the old men who line up on the stationary bikes behind me ogle my ass as I hit mile 3.
I run because it keeps me from being crazy.
And, as those of you who know me are well aware, I can be pretty damn crazy. Stuart warns me—and then disappears-- when I’m veering down Loony Lane. John has risked life and limb to tell me-on several occasions!-than I’m koo-koo. And Caryn, Brook and my other girlfriends are friends enough to tell me when my ass looks fat, my hair falls flat and my behavior gets too psycho.
Don’t cue the Psycho shower scene or anything here. I’m not live-alone-in-the-woods-and-make-bombs crazy. Nor am I wander-the-streets-at-night-singing-show-tunes crazy. I don’t have a scab collection—or a creepy porcelain doll collection for that matter. I don’t hear voices, I don’t believe in voo-doo and I don’t see dead people. After all, I’m a psychology major and an Intro to Psych teacher; I KNOW that kind of crazy and I know for certain that I’m not it. It’s not a well-known fact, but all psychology majors have to take all of the crazy-factor tests…I have tested positive for Type-A, neurotic perfectionist with Obsessive-Compulsive tendencies, but there isn’t any certifiable insanity in my mental make up.
I just have a lot of drama. And most of that drama is invented in my head.
It goes like this: in the course of my day, I text someone. They, for whatever reason, don’t text me back within what I consider a reasonable amount of time (basically, by the time my cell-phone goes dark). I start to wonder why. Did I offend them? Are they mad at me? Do they now hate me? Never want to see me again? Are they, 7th-grade-girl-style, sitting with all of our other friends talking smack about me? The longer it takes for them to text/call me back, the more I start to wonder and doubt.
And as I wonder and doubt, I sink into a funk. A nobody-likes-me, everybody-hates-me, guess-I’ll-go-eat-worms funk. The worst part is, the entire time I’m feeling sad and unloved, the rational part of my brain (yes, John, I do have one!) is telling me I’m being crazy. The rest of me—my Id for those fellow psych lovers out there—doesn’t really care and is certain that everyone hates me, is actively avoiding me and never wants to see me again.
This is stupid. It is irrational, annoying and unproductive. It turns my naturally positive, self-confident, kick-ass bitch of a self into a whiney, clingy, insecure, flat-chested 12-year-old girl.
I have, over the years, tried many things to stop the crazy. Therapy doesn’t help; I’m an amazingly great liar, even to my therapist. Group therapy is worse as I’m super-competitive, and so putting me in a situation where I feel compelled to compete to be Most Crazy is fairly counter-productive. I’ve read self-help books until I can spout inanities with the best day-time ‘therapists’.
The one that works best is not eating, but this is, of course, a horrible idea. The twisted Kate-logic says that, since I can’t control anything else around me, I can at least control what I eat. And no one has self-control like a functional anorexic. Not saying this is good; it’s stupid and self-destructive and wrong, but for 15 years it was my insane method of controlling my crazy.
Until I had daughters. Or rather, until my daughters were old enough to notice that sometimes Mommy doesn’t eat. Until my girlfriends all noticed and commented that I don’t eat. Until my husband caught on that weeks pass wherein I don’t eat. Yes, even amazing liars like me eventually, after 15 some-odd years, get caught. So I started eating.
Great. This helped the low-blood-sugar issues: I no longer get dizzy every time I stand up and lord knows I’m a lot less cranky. Problem is, I was still kinda koo-koo.
Until the day I accidentally bought running shoes from the janitor.
Stuart has always been a runner. He’s built like one: tall and lanky with legs that, if he shaved them and put on some pantyhose, would get him on the Rockettes’ kick line in a heartbeat. Currently, he’s training with his buddies for a half marathon. This means, among other things, that he needs new running shoes about every three months.
One afternoon, we wandered into Big Five to buy him a new pair of shoes and it was Bob, my favorite school janitor, who came over to help us. Before he retired, Bob and I were tight. We bonded over being the only Seahawks fans in Nevada (this is long before the Seahawks had even brief flashes of victory…we’re talking the 1-10 years) and the fact that Bob was always happy to kill the field mice who lived under my desk. When he retired, I lost track of Bob but missed our hallway chats.
So, in the course of catching up—and sharing our mutual disgust with all of the suddenly-Seahawks fans who have sprouted up in the recent years—Bob made a sales’ pitch to get me to buy some running shoes. I was due for a new pair of exercise shoes anyway, although I usually get cross-trainers since my cardio preferences are pretty varied. But a combination of nostalgia and a strong desire to exit the store before Jennifer knocked anything over prompted me to buy some expensive running shoes, at a ‘friend of employee’ discount instead.
The next morning at the gym I stared at the line of treadmills and thought: what the hell. Guess I could actually use these bad boys for running.
I hate running. Strange, really, since I’m a State Champion—for 3 years in a row!—track star with the Glory Days medals and still-unbroken school records to prove it. But I was a sprinter. And even back then, at the fast-and-nubile age of 16, I hated to run more than 400 meters. In fact, I think the fact that I hated running is one of the reasons I was so fucking fast: I was determined to get it over with as quickly as possible.
Since leaving the track, I’ve used various excuses as to why I work out religiously but don’t run: My ACL surgery prevents it. My asthma prevents it. My religion prevents it.
But for whatever reason, that morning I climbed on the treadmill and started to run.
God, it sucked! My ankles hurt. My stupid ACL-repaired knee hurt. My back hurt, my lungs hurt and even my right ear—where I kept having to jam the earbud back in—hurt. Somehow, I trudged through a mile at an embarrassing 12-minute pace. At one point, as I fixed the damn earbud for the millionth time, I nearly fell off (I can’t think, run and fix all at once and had to do one of those stumble-trip-grab maneuvers to avoid flying off the back of the treadmill). As soon as I hit one mile, I stopped, bent over at the waist, gasped for breath and swore that I’d never do THAT again.
And then something weird happened: I felt great. I felt loose and limber and energized. I felt sweaty and strong. And I felt…happy.
This feeling lasted all day. Caryn didn’t smile at me when I passed her in the hall that morning and I didn’t care. Brook took her customary 4 hours to text a response and I never once worried about it. Dance Mom Bitch was, well, a bitch and I just grinned at her. Never once during the day did I wonder if Person X liked me, if I’d offended Person Y, if Person Z now thought I was ugly and if Person Husband still loved me.
In short, running chased the crazies away.
The next day I ran 1.5 miles. It still sucked. It still hurt. It still kept the crazies away.
So now I run. Not every day. 3-4 times a week does the trick. I don’t run super-far, although the distance does increase as I regain the ground-eating, zen-inducing stride that I thought I had lost along with my teenage thighs, preference for blue eye shadow, and love of all things Madonna. But, if I go more than 2 days, I start to notice the crazies creeping back in. I start wondering if people like me, I start acting clingy. I stop eating.
And then, as soon as I run again, I’m fine.
I’m so addicted that today I did something to keep the crazies away that many others would define as crazy. I ran 3.5 miles on a sprained ankle. Sure it hurt. Sure, I ran funny (Caryn was running next to me and kept telling me to stop because I was limping so badly). But I HAD to run. It’d been 4 days and, like a thick, insidious fog, I could feel the crazies seeping in. So I sucked it up like any good athlete does and played—ran—hurt.
And then, as I limped through the rest of my day, I was happy and positive and carefree.
This is why I run. I run for my girls. I run for my husband. I run for my students and my friends and the people who have to interact with me for any reason. I run for my health and I run for my sanity and I run for my SELF.
I run for my life.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Confession: I often chant "don’t stop, baby, don’t stop baby!”
Unfortunately, I only chant this to myself.
Even more unfortunately, it’s not during any sort of self-gratification.
No, as any HMM will understand, I chant this to myself in order to get through the marathon after-school-until-bedtime period. As long as I keep moving, keep doing, never sit down, never lose momentum, never stop, I can get everything done.
And by everything, I DO mean ‘everything’: carpool to and from the day’s after-school activities, make dinner, supervise homework, keep a civil dinner table, clean up dinner and kitchen, bathe children, tidy house, read bedtime stories, get children to actually go to bed. OH, and any other little things that may pop-up on the to-do list.
Doesn’t sound so bad, right? And it isn’t…so long as I just keep on keepin’ on. But if I sit, or pause, or even stop to answer the phone, all hell breaks loose. Jennifer will color on Kathleen’s homework, or the dog will abscond with it and eat it. Which really pisses me off, by the way, because for the past 12 years of teaching, I have made great fun of the ‘my dog ate my homework’ cliché and so, of course, the Universe saw it fit to gift ME with a dog who thinks a sheet of carefully printed first grade spelling words is yummy.
Like so many mommies, I often do this routine without a husband. In fact, I do it so often without a husband that when he’s home, he upsets my rhythm.
And the only thing worse than stopping too soon is having one’s rhythm upset.
I re-learned this fact this week when Stuart threw out his back and I suddenly had 3 children; a type-A neurotic 6 ½-year-old who actually begs to do her homework every night (seriously, one night I was super-tired and told her we could skip homework for a night. She threw a fit as if I had just told her Christmas was canceled. Weird kid.); a manic, manipulative 4 ½-year-old who is actively trying to stage a coup and take over as supreme dictator of our little family (some nights, she achieves success…impressive for a kid who still tops out at 30 inches and 20 pounds); and a cranky, doped-up 37-year-old who is trying to be a helpful husband but was about as useful to me this week as a Cat-5 hurricane is to the Gulf Coast after an oil spill.
Worse, the phrase ‘Stuart threw out his back’ is incorrect. The real version is that Stuart was thrown in Defensive Tactics training and hurt his back as result.
The painfully true version is he was thrown by a girl.
No, not a ‘girl’ as in a ‘man whom we’re trying to insult by implying that he has a vagina’, but an ACTUAL girl.
This has caused every member of his department, from the Sheriff on down, to comment—in great length and increasingly-crass detail--on Stuart’s ‘man-gina’.
Men suck.
They’re funny as fuck, but they still suck.
Because, of course, this means MY man is lying on our couch, reading the text messages from his ‘buddies’ and getting progressively loopier and crankier. He’s on muscle relaxers, which turn him into a middle-class, suburban version of an angry, white, Chris Rock. Only not funny.
Worse, he’s messing up my rhythm. Not by being physically in my way—man can’t move, after all—but mentally he’s screwing me up because he WANTS TO TALK.
What the fuck. This is the man who HATES to talk. In fact, he is fond of ending conversations by either A. walking out of the room or B. mentally leaving the planet and staring blankly into space before slowly blinking at me and grunting to let me know he is now acknowledging my existence again (by the way, the ‘grunt’ only occurs after I’ve stopped chattering away).
Apparently, muscle relaxers also relax his vocal cords. He just babbles on and on and on about lord-knows-what. I could tune this out, but the man actually seems to expect a RESPONSE of some sort to whatever gossip-infused story he’s imparting about the great inner-drama of the sheriff’s department and he won’t accept an ‘uh-huh’, ‘yeah’, or ‘grunt’ as a response. Today, as I’m trying to get chores done, he actually accused me of not caring about his life.
Whatever. I have shit to do. Like clean the toilets and cook dinner and read spelling words and pry paper off the dog’s teeth and keep my youngest from texting naughty words to everyone on my contact list.
Basically, right now, when the Universe has decided to take a big old sloppy dump directly onto my head (did I mention that in addition to a Broken Boy for a husband, our finances are all fucked up, the house next door just sold for $150K less than we paid for ours, the dog needs shots, the girls each need new dance costumes, the roof is leaking, the car is leaking, the garage door won’t go up and there’s a family of field mice holding a grand family reunion under the boxes of Christmas decorations in the broken garage?), I cannot afford to stop for even ONE second. Because if I stop, not only will the hard-water ring around my toilet bowls remain for Sunday Night dinner with my mother (and that is NOT an option), but I may have to acknowledge that my ‘don’t stop’ chant may need to be replaced.
I even know what it should be replaced with: one of my favorite things to say to my children, ‘You’re fine; you’re happy.”
I usually throw out this pithy statement when they are discontent, bickering, fighting or generally acting like spoiled brats. Most recently, I busted it out when, after a day that involved a parade, a carnival and a pool party, all with some of our closest friends, Kathleen demanded to know what we were doing next and then announced that I’m ‘not a fun mommy’ when I answered that we had done everything; it was time to go home.
I am such a hypocrite for snapping at her. I know just how Kathleen feels. I have everything I ever desired, and many things I never even thought to dream of and yet find myself vaguely discontent.
It’s really quite obnoxious.
I have a gorgeous, strong, smart husband who is devoted to me and our kids. He even has a cool job. Or, it’s at least cool to say to people when they ask what my husband does…has a better ‘chicks dig it’ factor than my friend Cheryl whose husband is an accountant. In reality, I’d rather be married to an accountant…being married to a cop is primarily a lonely pain in my ass (and, apparently, his back if he has to fight a girl). Still, we’ve been married for over a decade, which is a major accomplishment these days. A bigger accomplishment is that we still love each other. In fact, we even like each other most of the time. Perhaps even more importantly, we still have stuff to say to each other at the dinner table every night. And things to do with each other in bed later in the night.
I have two smart, beautiful, wonderful daughters who are the spitting image of me, both in looks and temperament. They’re well-adjusted, happy kids. I know this because they are full of sass, vinegar, spit and all the other things well-adjusted kids are full of. They can be polite in company, well-behaved at school and perfect little monsters at home. They are all I ever wanted and I feel blessed to have them.
I have a career that is consistently satisfying, often frustrating and never lucrative. Still, once I’m there--and have inhaled at least 24 ounces of dark, rich, strong coffee--I realize I’m happier working there than in any other career choice. Besides, I have the added bonus of being a trust fund baby. The fund isn’t so big that I can fly around in my own jet and party with Paris Hilton, but it supplements our meager public servants’ salaries enough that we can probably fix the leaking roof and still take the kids to Disneyland every once in a while.
I have a cute little house located at the back of a cul-de-sac in a nice neighborhood. Sure, it’s lost all of its equity in this piss-poor economy, but it does have blue shutters and a white picket fence. I have actual, real furniture inside. Walls with color schemes, rooms with focal points. Sure, the back yard landscaping leaves something to be desired—the focal point is a bright blue above-ground pool and a rusting swing set—but the panoramic view of the Sierra mountains from my slightly-battered patio chairs is priceless.
My parents and my sister live close by, the friends whom I am blessed to have live both close by and in exotic, fun-to-visit locations. None of these people is crippled, ill or a poor influence upon me. I managed to be born smart, pretty and rich and have held on to two of those three attributes.
Have you vomited yet?
By all accounts, I have succeeded. And I did it by chanting ‘don’t stop baby, don’t stop baby’ all the way up to the dreaded age of 30-ish.
And then I asked, “what now?” See, in my Life List, I kinda forgot to figure out what to do once I accomplished everything.
“I’m fine; I’m happy”.
Except sometimes I’m not. Tonight I'm standing in my pretty kitchen, holding a damp sponge wondering, “what now?”
Do I finally ‘stop’? Do I just maintain what I have? Do I learn, like some Buddhist novice, to be content? Do I tackle new goals; run a marathon, earn a PhD, watch all of my DVR que, finish Moby Dick? Do I take a cue from my mother and grandmother and all of the sisters and women in history who have asked the same question as they tidied up from the family meal and simply BE, live for my kids and my husband and the happy little home I have worked so hard for?
Be fine. Be Happy.
Fine I can handle. Happy is elusive. Fine is easy, content is fairly consistent. But there is an aching, a gnawing, a deep pulling emptiness within me that swells up and overwhelms and proclaims, “you’re no fun, Kate.”
I never did put ‘fun’ on my Life List. I guess I kinda assumed it would happen, bippity-boppity-boo style when I got all the other things Cinderella wanted. It’s not that I don’t HAVE fun. I do. Lots. It’s just that I’m not sure I myself AM fun.
Which brings to mind something else I’m always telling my kids, “Not everything is fun.”
Tonight, I find myself asking their most common response, “Why not?”
Why don’t I find the fact that I have now crossed almost every--Matt Damon continues to elude me--blessed item off my Life List at least satisfying, hopefully amazing and certainly fun?
I don’t want to be discontent. I don’t really want to just be complacent, either. It’s just that now that I’ve accomplished everything, maintaining it has become a full-time job and I just don’t have any time left to add anything new to my list. I guess I could maybe run a marathon, but I’ve heard that makes your toe-nails fall off, and then all my glass slippers would look funny.
So, tonight—before I ‘stop’ for the evening--I’m going to go into Excel and open up my Life List and add a new goal and a new little chant for myself:
“You’re Fine; Be Happy.”
Even more unfortunately, it’s not during any sort of self-gratification.
No, as any HMM will understand, I chant this to myself in order to get through the marathon after-school-until-bedtime period. As long as I keep moving, keep doing, never sit down, never lose momentum, never stop, I can get everything done.
And by everything, I DO mean ‘everything’: carpool to and from the day’s after-school activities, make dinner, supervise homework, keep a civil dinner table, clean up dinner and kitchen, bathe children, tidy house, read bedtime stories, get children to actually go to bed. OH, and any other little things that may pop-up on the to-do list.
Doesn’t sound so bad, right? And it isn’t…so long as I just keep on keepin’ on. But if I sit, or pause, or even stop to answer the phone, all hell breaks loose. Jennifer will color on Kathleen’s homework, or the dog will abscond with it and eat it. Which really pisses me off, by the way, because for the past 12 years of teaching, I have made great fun of the ‘my dog ate my homework’ cliché and so, of course, the Universe saw it fit to gift ME with a dog who thinks a sheet of carefully printed first grade spelling words is yummy.
Like so many mommies, I often do this routine without a husband. In fact, I do it so often without a husband that when he’s home, he upsets my rhythm.
And the only thing worse than stopping too soon is having one’s rhythm upset.
I re-learned this fact this week when Stuart threw out his back and I suddenly had 3 children; a type-A neurotic 6 ½-year-old who actually begs to do her homework every night (seriously, one night I was super-tired and told her we could skip homework for a night. She threw a fit as if I had just told her Christmas was canceled. Weird kid.); a manic, manipulative 4 ½-year-old who is actively trying to stage a coup and take over as supreme dictator of our little family (some nights, she achieves success…impressive for a kid who still tops out at 30 inches and 20 pounds); and a cranky, doped-up 37-year-old who is trying to be a helpful husband but was about as useful to me this week as a Cat-5 hurricane is to the Gulf Coast after an oil spill.
Worse, the phrase ‘Stuart threw out his back’ is incorrect. The real version is that Stuart was thrown in Defensive Tactics training and hurt his back as result.
The painfully true version is he was thrown by a girl.
No, not a ‘girl’ as in a ‘man whom we’re trying to insult by implying that he has a vagina’, but an ACTUAL girl.
This has caused every member of his department, from the Sheriff on down, to comment—in great length and increasingly-crass detail--on Stuart’s ‘man-gina’.
Men suck.
They’re funny as fuck, but they still suck.
Because, of course, this means MY man is lying on our couch, reading the text messages from his ‘buddies’ and getting progressively loopier and crankier. He’s on muscle relaxers, which turn him into a middle-class, suburban version of an angry, white, Chris Rock. Only not funny.
Worse, he’s messing up my rhythm. Not by being physically in my way—man can’t move, after all—but mentally he’s screwing me up because he WANTS TO TALK.
What the fuck. This is the man who HATES to talk. In fact, he is fond of ending conversations by either A. walking out of the room or B. mentally leaving the planet and staring blankly into space before slowly blinking at me and grunting to let me know he is now acknowledging my existence again (by the way, the ‘grunt’ only occurs after I’ve stopped chattering away).
Apparently, muscle relaxers also relax his vocal cords. He just babbles on and on and on about lord-knows-what. I could tune this out, but the man actually seems to expect a RESPONSE of some sort to whatever gossip-infused story he’s imparting about the great inner-drama of the sheriff’s department and he won’t accept an ‘uh-huh’, ‘yeah’, or ‘grunt’ as a response. Today, as I’m trying to get chores done, he actually accused me of not caring about his life.
Whatever. I have shit to do. Like clean the toilets and cook dinner and read spelling words and pry paper off the dog’s teeth and keep my youngest from texting naughty words to everyone on my contact list.
Basically, right now, when the Universe has decided to take a big old sloppy dump directly onto my head (did I mention that in addition to a Broken Boy for a husband, our finances are all fucked up, the house next door just sold for $150K less than we paid for ours, the dog needs shots, the girls each need new dance costumes, the roof is leaking, the car is leaking, the garage door won’t go up and there’s a family of field mice holding a grand family reunion under the boxes of Christmas decorations in the broken garage?), I cannot afford to stop for even ONE second. Because if I stop, not only will the hard-water ring around my toilet bowls remain for Sunday Night dinner with my mother (and that is NOT an option), but I may have to acknowledge that my ‘don’t stop’ chant may need to be replaced.
I even know what it should be replaced with: one of my favorite things to say to my children, ‘You’re fine; you’re happy.”
I usually throw out this pithy statement when they are discontent, bickering, fighting or generally acting like spoiled brats. Most recently, I busted it out when, after a day that involved a parade, a carnival and a pool party, all with some of our closest friends, Kathleen demanded to know what we were doing next and then announced that I’m ‘not a fun mommy’ when I answered that we had done everything; it was time to go home.
I am such a hypocrite for snapping at her. I know just how Kathleen feels. I have everything I ever desired, and many things I never even thought to dream of and yet find myself vaguely discontent.
It’s really quite obnoxious.
I have a gorgeous, strong, smart husband who is devoted to me and our kids. He even has a cool job. Or, it’s at least cool to say to people when they ask what my husband does…has a better ‘chicks dig it’ factor than my friend Cheryl whose husband is an accountant. In reality, I’d rather be married to an accountant…being married to a cop is primarily a lonely pain in my ass (and, apparently, his back if he has to fight a girl). Still, we’ve been married for over a decade, which is a major accomplishment these days. A bigger accomplishment is that we still love each other. In fact, we even like each other most of the time. Perhaps even more importantly, we still have stuff to say to each other at the dinner table every night. And things to do with each other in bed later in the night.
I have two smart, beautiful, wonderful daughters who are the spitting image of me, both in looks and temperament. They’re well-adjusted, happy kids. I know this because they are full of sass, vinegar, spit and all the other things well-adjusted kids are full of. They can be polite in company, well-behaved at school and perfect little monsters at home. They are all I ever wanted and I feel blessed to have them.
I have a career that is consistently satisfying, often frustrating and never lucrative. Still, once I’m there--and have inhaled at least 24 ounces of dark, rich, strong coffee--I realize I’m happier working there than in any other career choice. Besides, I have the added bonus of being a trust fund baby. The fund isn’t so big that I can fly around in my own jet and party with Paris Hilton, but it supplements our meager public servants’ salaries enough that we can probably fix the leaking roof and still take the kids to Disneyland every once in a while.
I have a cute little house located at the back of a cul-de-sac in a nice neighborhood. Sure, it’s lost all of its equity in this piss-poor economy, but it does have blue shutters and a white picket fence. I have actual, real furniture inside. Walls with color schemes, rooms with focal points. Sure, the back yard landscaping leaves something to be desired—the focal point is a bright blue above-ground pool and a rusting swing set—but the panoramic view of the Sierra mountains from my slightly-battered patio chairs is priceless.
My parents and my sister live close by, the friends whom I am blessed to have live both close by and in exotic, fun-to-visit locations. None of these people is crippled, ill or a poor influence upon me. I managed to be born smart, pretty and rich and have held on to two of those three attributes.
Have you vomited yet?
By all accounts, I have succeeded. And I did it by chanting ‘don’t stop baby, don’t stop baby’ all the way up to the dreaded age of 30-ish.
And then I asked, “what now?” See, in my Life List, I kinda forgot to figure out what to do once I accomplished everything.
“I’m fine; I’m happy”.
Except sometimes I’m not. Tonight I'm standing in my pretty kitchen, holding a damp sponge wondering, “what now?”
Do I finally ‘stop’? Do I just maintain what I have? Do I learn, like some Buddhist novice, to be content? Do I tackle new goals; run a marathon, earn a PhD, watch all of my DVR que, finish Moby Dick? Do I take a cue from my mother and grandmother and all of the sisters and women in history who have asked the same question as they tidied up from the family meal and simply BE, live for my kids and my husband and the happy little home I have worked so hard for?
Be fine. Be Happy.
Fine I can handle. Happy is elusive. Fine is easy, content is fairly consistent. But there is an aching, a gnawing, a deep pulling emptiness within me that swells up and overwhelms and proclaims, “you’re no fun, Kate.”
I never did put ‘fun’ on my Life List. I guess I kinda assumed it would happen, bippity-boppity-boo style when I got all the other things Cinderella wanted. It’s not that I don’t HAVE fun. I do. Lots. It’s just that I’m not sure I myself AM fun.
Which brings to mind something else I’m always telling my kids, “Not everything is fun.”
Tonight, I find myself asking their most common response, “Why not?”
Why don’t I find the fact that I have now crossed almost every--Matt Damon continues to elude me--blessed item off my Life List at least satisfying, hopefully amazing and certainly fun?
I don’t want to be discontent. I don’t really want to just be complacent, either. It’s just that now that I’ve accomplished everything, maintaining it has become a full-time job and I just don’t have any time left to add anything new to my list. I guess I could maybe run a marathon, but I’ve heard that makes your toe-nails fall off, and then all my glass slippers would look funny.
So, tonight—before I ‘stop’ for the evening--I’m going to go into Excel and open up my Life List and add a new goal and a new little chant for myself:
“You’re Fine; Be Happy.”
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Confession: I like it better when it’s not legal
There is an evil law out there. Actually, it’s not even really a law; it’s more like a precedent. And, as any first year law student can tell you, once a precedent is set, it’s a real bitch to break.
Here’s the problem. In a shout-out to Natasha, Caryn and all of my other mathematically-inclined Hot Minivan Moms out there, I am going to present this in syllogistic format:
A. Men like to nail hot chicks.
B. Ergo: They marry one of the hot chicks they like nailing best.
C. Unfortunately Ergo: Eventually, those ‘hot chicks’ become hot minivan moms who have had 1+ kids and traded in their rockin’ stilettos for non-back-breaking tennis shoes (at least on a soccer-to-dance-to-birthday-party-caravan daily basis).
D. Sadly Ergo: Men are still legally required to tell the ‘formerly hot’ chicks they married that they are hot.
E. Ego Point: The formerly hot chicks are painfully aware of points A – D, therefore, the ‘you’re so hot’ compliments paid by one’s husband who swore vows to say such things are sullied with a ‘you are legally required to think so’ smear.
F. Therefore, a ‘you’re hot’ compliment from a man NOT one’s husband means about a million times more than a compliment from one’s husband who is just hoping to avoid a ‘you don’t like me anymore’ fight at 2 am.
We women don’t like to admit this. But, in fact, from about the age of 13 on, we each are painfully aware of two things: A. exactly how attractive we are and B. exactly how much others (i.e. MEN!) are lying to us about how attractive we are.
Because I have been informed by my various moral and/or lawyer-inclined friends that it is rude to use others as anecdotal evidence to my self-espoused truths, I will use myself to prove my syllogism.
I have known all my life that I am beautiful.
I have only recently become truly cognizant of beauty.
I am aware that it is a faux pax, of varying degrees, to admit awareness of one’s own beauty. I think that is a load of crap. All women know, to the most minute degree, exactly how beautiful they are in comparison to society’s standard and can evaluate, in a quick visual sweep of a room, how beautiful they are in comparison to every other woman present. This is an in-born female trait that can be witnessed even in young girls. We could argue (and many have, ad nauseum) that Society and the Media and Hollywood and our Mothers, Fathers, Sisters, Husbands, etc are to blame for this.
I say we just accept all of the above as fact and move on. Or, at least, move back to the point of the story: me. Like any woman, I know just how beautiful I am. Oh, and one more aside: any woman who claims she is ‘unaware’ of her beauty is either 1. unfortunate looking; 2. blind or 3. is most definitely lying through her Crest White Strips whitened teeth.
I know how beautiful I was. Not Jessica Alba or Giselle beautiful, but I looked OK. While I lack long legs, thick eyelashes or sex goddess hair, I learned early on from my mom and grandma how to play up my best assets, namely an athletic body shaped by several sports, a symmetrical face and big green eyes courtesy of some long-lost Cherokee woman who had the misfortune to cross paths with one of my Scottish male ancestors. I have always been thankful for the eyes and a bit peeved that that poor woman didn’t also pass down the long, thick, dark hair; my own is thin, baby-fine and stick-straight brown.
Still, like I said, I do OK. The right hair cut plays up my limp hair and, while I may long for long sex-goddess waves, the stick-straight swing of glossy locks fits my personality. Some have called it my Bitch Hair, but hey, when the shoe fits…
Turning 30 was rough on me. Suddenly I realized that, after two children and three decades, I could no longer hope to be one of the hottest girls in the room and instead should be pleased with looking great for my age group. And, seeing as my age group does not include co-eds and most of Young Hollywood—but DOES include things such as ‘mom jeans’ and ‘shaping tennis shoes’-- figuring out how to dress appropriately is a bit of a struggle. I still (thanks to 4 am workouts and vats of yogurt) can fit into my old 20-something clothes, but would look wrong escorting my children to a playdate in daisy dukes and a halter top. Afterall, I and the other moms talk smack about the women who do this.
I really, really try to get it right. It’s tough, as ‘getting it right’ means balancing ‘formerly hot’ with ‘currently responsible’ yet with a stylish twist that still makes my husband want me on a Saturday night after the kids to go bed.
As a result, I sometimes look like a 23-year-old-wannabe, sometimes like a Martha Bush cast-off and, if all the stars have aligned, I look kinda good for a 30-something married mom of two.
Added to that, it now takes at least 3 hours to achieve what a shower and a five-minute face used to achieve. Sigh.
I find all of this exhausting. Still I refuse to let myself go and wear the loose yoga pants, running shoes and roomy tee-shirt that would be my outfit of choice. Well, OK, I refuse to wear that outfit out of the house. Unless I’m going to the gym. Or the grocery store when I’m only going out for milk. Or to my sister’s.
Well, damn it, at least I always have mascara on and it’s a good bet that the outfit is clean, seeing as I have an entire drawer-full of variations on it. And when I really want to work it, to prove that I may be ‘formerly hot’, but there the word ‘hot’ is still in the equation, I take off the yoga pants and put on a top that shows my rockin’ rack and jeans that show my ASSet.
And then I get thoroughly butt-hurt when no one notices. All HMMs know the feeling. Here we are, for once thinking we look pretty damn OK…or even pretty damn GOOD…and no one notices.
If we’re lucky, our husbands do. After all, a good HMM’s spouse has been well-trained in the primping time to compliment ratio: the longer we spend getting ready, the stronger the compliment must be.
For example, the typical 30 minute shower-make-up-outfit-hair routine requires only a preoccupied kiss on the cheek and a distracted, ‘you look nice’ response. An hour requires a momentary pause and a slightly more emphatic, ‘you look great’ comment. A full-blown trip-to-the-hairdresser, new-dress, 2 hour deal demands a raised brow, momentary loss of breath and smirking, ‘wow!”
This is expected. Scratch that: this is required. And it is lovely to hear. But it does not cause a blush. It does not create a tingle. It does not make us pull our shoulders back and strut around in our most sexy-fierce fashion.
Because we all knew he had to say it. No HMM would stay married to a man who does not understand the complex dynamics of the required compliment.
What we moms ‘of a certain age’ really crave is the unsolicited, un-required compliment from a man not our own. A casual, ‘nice dress!’ or even a sleezy, ‘great rack!’ will do more to raise our confidence in our sexual power than any number of store-bought dead flowers in a cheap glass vase handed to us by a husband really hoping to get laid sometime in the next month or so.
When we don’t receive an un-solicited or required compliment, we fall apart. Some get bitchy, some get slutty, some give up. And some, like me, sob uncontrollably in the bathroom during a dinner party and are discovered by their friends’ husband.
Yes, Caryn’s husband found me sobbing in the bathroom at Brook and John’s house. He and I were equally horrified. I because I really, REALLY hate crying in front of people (really, Readers, how many of you have actually witnessed me cry? Point made.) He because, well, what man wants to find a sobbing, incoherent woman? Especially when she’s not HIS woman yet insists upon clinging to him and wetting his tee-shirt with inconsolable sobs anyway.
The worst part is, he knew what was wrong. After somewhat-pathetically asking if he couldn’t fetch Brook, or Caryn, or Stu, or John, or ANYONE to deal with my leaking tear ducts (I sobbingly refused all), he patted my back in the way one might pacify an angry rattlesnake and reassured me, ‘Kate, you know you’re gorgeous.”
This is humiliating. I don’t know if he knew I was crying because he, my husband and John had all complimented every single woman present (and some who weren’t) except for me on their beauty, style, sexiness etc., or if he just assumed that I am so vain that that is what I was crying about. Either option is horrible.
Even more horrible, his uncomfortable, sheepish comment dried my tears and restored enough of my confidence that I could wipe the mascara out of my crow’s feet, straighten my stick-straight, graying hair, adjust the rack I had to pay an obscene amount of money for and march back out in the room. And I could do all of this because a man told me I was pretty.
And that man wasn’t required by law in 26 of 50 states to do so.
Here’s the problem. In a shout-out to Natasha, Caryn and all of my other mathematically-inclined Hot Minivan Moms out there, I am going to present this in syllogistic format:
A. Men like to nail hot chicks.
B. Ergo: They marry one of the hot chicks they like nailing best.
C. Unfortunately Ergo: Eventually, those ‘hot chicks’ become hot minivan moms who have had 1+ kids and traded in their rockin’ stilettos for non-back-breaking tennis shoes (at least on a soccer-to-dance-to-birthday-party-caravan daily basis).
D. Sadly Ergo: Men are still legally required to tell the ‘formerly hot’ chicks they married that they are hot.
E. Ego Point: The formerly hot chicks are painfully aware of points A – D, therefore, the ‘you’re so hot’ compliments paid by one’s husband who swore vows to say such things are sullied with a ‘you are legally required to think so’ smear.
F. Therefore, a ‘you’re hot’ compliment from a man NOT one’s husband means about a million times more than a compliment from one’s husband who is just hoping to avoid a ‘you don’t like me anymore’ fight at 2 am.
We women don’t like to admit this. But, in fact, from about the age of 13 on, we each are painfully aware of two things: A. exactly how attractive we are and B. exactly how much others (i.e. MEN!) are lying to us about how attractive we are.
Because I have been informed by my various moral and/or lawyer-inclined friends that it is rude to use others as anecdotal evidence to my self-espoused truths, I will use myself to prove my syllogism.
I have known all my life that I am beautiful.
I have only recently become truly cognizant of beauty.
I am aware that it is a faux pax, of varying degrees, to admit awareness of one’s own beauty. I think that is a load of crap. All women know, to the most minute degree, exactly how beautiful they are in comparison to society’s standard and can evaluate, in a quick visual sweep of a room, how beautiful they are in comparison to every other woman present. This is an in-born female trait that can be witnessed even in young girls. We could argue (and many have, ad nauseum) that Society and the Media and Hollywood and our Mothers, Fathers, Sisters, Husbands, etc are to blame for this.
I say we just accept all of the above as fact and move on. Or, at least, move back to the point of the story: me. Like any woman, I know just how beautiful I am. Oh, and one more aside: any woman who claims she is ‘unaware’ of her beauty is either 1. unfortunate looking; 2. blind or 3. is most definitely lying through her Crest White Strips whitened teeth.
I know how beautiful I was. Not Jessica Alba or Giselle beautiful, but I looked OK. While I lack long legs, thick eyelashes or sex goddess hair, I learned early on from my mom and grandma how to play up my best assets, namely an athletic body shaped by several sports, a symmetrical face and big green eyes courtesy of some long-lost Cherokee woman who had the misfortune to cross paths with one of my Scottish male ancestors. I have always been thankful for the eyes and a bit peeved that that poor woman didn’t also pass down the long, thick, dark hair; my own is thin, baby-fine and stick-straight brown.
Still, like I said, I do OK. The right hair cut plays up my limp hair and, while I may long for long sex-goddess waves, the stick-straight swing of glossy locks fits my personality. Some have called it my Bitch Hair, but hey, when the shoe fits…
Turning 30 was rough on me. Suddenly I realized that, after two children and three decades, I could no longer hope to be one of the hottest girls in the room and instead should be pleased with looking great for my age group. And, seeing as my age group does not include co-eds and most of Young Hollywood—but DOES include things such as ‘mom jeans’ and ‘shaping tennis shoes’-- figuring out how to dress appropriately is a bit of a struggle. I still (thanks to 4 am workouts and vats of yogurt) can fit into my old 20-something clothes, but would look wrong escorting my children to a playdate in daisy dukes and a halter top. Afterall, I and the other moms talk smack about the women who do this.
I really, really try to get it right. It’s tough, as ‘getting it right’ means balancing ‘formerly hot’ with ‘currently responsible’ yet with a stylish twist that still makes my husband want me on a Saturday night after the kids to go bed.
As a result, I sometimes look like a 23-year-old-wannabe, sometimes like a Martha Bush cast-off and, if all the stars have aligned, I look kinda good for a 30-something married mom of two.
Added to that, it now takes at least 3 hours to achieve what a shower and a five-minute face used to achieve. Sigh.
I find all of this exhausting. Still I refuse to let myself go and wear the loose yoga pants, running shoes and roomy tee-shirt that would be my outfit of choice. Well, OK, I refuse to wear that outfit out of the house. Unless I’m going to the gym. Or the grocery store when I’m only going out for milk. Or to my sister’s.
Well, damn it, at least I always have mascara on and it’s a good bet that the outfit is clean, seeing as I have an entire drawer-full of variations on it. And when I really want to work it, to prove that I may be ‘formerly hot’, but there the word ‘hot’ is still in the equation, I take off the yoga pants and put on a top that shows my rockin’ rack and jeans that show my ASSet.
And then I get thoroughly butt-hurt when no one notices. All HMMs know the feeling. Here we are, for once thinking we look pretty damn OK…or even pretty damn GOOD…and no one notices.
If we’re lucky, our husbands do. After all, a good HMM’s spouse has been well-trained in the primping time to compliment ratio: the longer we spend getting ready, the stronger the compliment must be.
For example, the typical 30 minute shower-make-up-outfit-hair routine requires only a preoccupied kiss on the cheek and a distracted, ‘you look nice’ response. An hour requires a momentary pause and a slightly more emphatic, ‘you look great’ comment. A full-blown trip-to-the-hairdresser, new-dress, 2 hour deal demands a raised brow, momentary loss of breath and smirking, ‘wow!”
This is expected. Scratch that: this is required. And it is lovely to hear. But it does not cause a blush. It does not create a tingle. It does not make us pull our shoulders back and strut around in our most sexy-fierce fashion.
Because we all knew he had to say it. No HMM would stay married to a man who does not understand the complex dynamics of the required compliment.
What we moms ‘of a certain age’ really crave is the unsolicited, un-required compliment from a man not our own. A casual, ‘nice dress!’ or even a sleezy, ‘great rack!’ will do more to raise our confidence in our sexual power than any number of store-bought dead flowers in a cheap glass vase handed to us by a husband really hoping to get laid sometime in the next month or so.
When we don’t receive an un-solicited or required compliment, we fall apart. Some get bitchy, some get slutty, some give up. And some, like me, sob uncontrollably in the bathroom during a dinner party and are discovered by their friends’ husband.
Yes, Caryn’s husband found me sobbing in the bathroom at Brook and John’s house. He and I were equally horrified. I because I really, REALLY hate crying in front of people (really, Readers, how many of you have actually witnessed me cry? Point made.) He because, well, what man wants to find a sobbing, incoherent woman? Especially when she’s not HIS woman yet insists upon clinging to him and wetting his tee-shirt with inconsolable sobs anyway.
The worst part is, he knew what was wrong. After somewhat-pathetically asking if he couldn’t fetch Brook, or Caryn, or Stu, or John, or ANYONE to deal with my leaking tear ducts (I sobbingly refused all), he patted my back in the way one might pacify an angry rattlesnake and reassured me, ‘Kate, you know you’re gorgeous.”
This is humiliating. I don’t know if he knew I was crying because he, my husband and John had all complimented every single woman present (and some who weren’t) except for me on their beauty, style, sexiness etc., or if he just assumed that I am so vain that that is what I was crying about. Either option is horrible.
Even more horrible, his uncomfortable, sheepish comment dried my tears and restored enough of my confidence that I could wipe the mascara out of my crow’s feet, straighten my stick-straight, graying hair, adjust the rack I had to pay an obscene amount of money for and march back out in the room. And I could do all of this because a man told me I was pretty.
And that man wasn’t required by law in 26 of 50 states to do so.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Confession: I Drink, Swear, Love
Yup. I read Eat, Pray, Love. And, Yup, I was inspired and all that. Blah blah blah.
Actually, I have a major bone to pick with that damn book: it made me hungry. And I don’t like to eat. I resent all those passages rhapsodizing about yummy food: I think I gained four pounds from chapter ten alone!
It did not have the same effect on my spiritual life. I try to pray, really, I do. But my stupid brain doesn’t cooperate and, instead of achieving a nice zen-like state and becoming one with God or Zeus or the Universe, I start reviewing my to-do list. And then I start swearing.
As for Love, well, THAT I didn’t need any inspiration for! As will be revealed, I am apparently a slut. At least according to my mom.
Still, the novel did inspire me to write my own super-successful Woman’s Self-Discovery Novel that then becomes an International best-seller and then an Oscar-buzzing movie staring Julia Roberts….OK, that SO is not going to happen. For so many reasons:
1. I don’t much want to discover anything else about myself. I was a psychology major and know for a fact that self-discovery is a pretty darn painful process. I like my current ignorant bliss. I know myself ok—about as well as I know my neighbor, Rob—and just like I don’t want to know why Rob insists upon mowing his lawn in purple speedos and black hi-tops, I also don’t really want to know why I periodically get neurotic and demand tons of emotional reassurance of everyone from my husband to my friends to my butcher.
2. Self-discovery requires Alone Time. Lots of it. I don’t get alone time. Ever. I try to steal some every once in a while by locking myself in the bathroom. If I were ever faced with serious chunks of alone time I know exactly how I’d fill it: with a million books, a cask of wine and Matt Damon to rub my feet while I read and sipped. When I got relaxed enough, I’d take a nap. Then I’d wake up and make use of Matt Damon for more than a foot rub (wink wink). Then I’d repeat. I could probably keep that up for, oh, ever!
3. If I did discover myself, I’d probably discover that I’m a crappy writer (do I HAVE my own agent???) and so I’d stop writing which would never lead to that best-selling adapted for movie-format novel.
4. Besides, I’d rather be played by Angelina Jolie. Julie Roberts is amazing and gorgeous, but she’s just too GOOD to be me. Angie is a lot more my style. Make of that what you will.
The sucky thing about trying to avoid Self-Discovery is that others insist upon enlightening you, whether you desire it or not. Specifically, Mothers delight in this. Being a mother myself, I understand. We love our children and want the best for them. And we often define ‘the best for them’ as ‘whatever conduct we ourselves approve of.” Not surprisingly to those reading this, my own conduct is a bit of a trial to my poor sainted mother.
Recently, she asked me if I was having an affair.
I have no idea where she got this idea. Actually, I do: I was spotted at Costco with a Man-Who-Is-Not-My-Husband. This being a small town, the gossip mill went into hyperdrive and soon my mother was informed by no fewer than 5 ‘friends’ that her slutty daughter had been spotted loading 20 pounds of butter in aisle 10 of Costco with a blonde man. To set the record straight, we were buying food for the Senior Pancake Breakfast. Bulk-quantities of saturated fat would not be what made me horny enough to break my marriage vows.
Besides, when the fuck would I pencil an affair into my busy schedule? Remember, I multi-task my poop-time by also making it my daily alone-time. And that is just WRONG. So, unless my boyfriend wants to get busy in the bathroom, I’m not quite sure when I can fit him in. Sorry, boys.
However, this apparently means my mother thinks I’m a slut. Ok, Ok…I WAS a slut. Had I been born with a penis, I’d have been the kind of legendary collegiate Player all men like to believe they were. But that was long ago, before Stu, crow’s feet, minivans and stretch marks. These days I’m only a femme fatale in my day dreams. And then when I’m all nice and horny from those day dreams I go home and make sweet, sweet love to my husband.
Or naughty love. Or hard, fast, sexy love. Or slow, drawn out love. Or…well, you get the point. My husband is now the focus of all of my slut-like tendencies.
Unless Matt Damon shows up with wine, a book and offers to rub my feet. But back to discovering myself…
The fact that my own mother thinks I'm a whore did not send me running off to the nearest priest or Freudian psychologist. It just led me to swear.
I didn’t just ‘swear’. No ‘oh, darn’, ‘shoot’, or even, ‘shit’. No, I went for the world’s most PERFECT word. FUCK.
There is no greater word in the English language. I would argue that there is no greater word in ANY language. Any conjugation of the word is immensely satisfying: fuck. Fucker. Fucking. It also functions as the perfect split to any infinitive. As in, ‘to split an infinitive’ just becomes a bit…jazzier…when split with the perfect interjection: ‘to FUCKING split an infinitive!” And yes, that is my split infinitive lecture at my public high school in my conservative small town. Sue me. Or fire me. Whatever.
Fuck you.
Anyway, after indulging in extensive swear-therapy, I turned to my therapy of choice: wine.
This led my poor mom to ask me, ‘honey, do you have a drinking problem?”
Huh. I don’t know. I was too busy enjoying my chardonnay to think about it at the time. Later, I did what all smart women do when asked a self-discovery question they can’t answer: I asked my girl friends at our next Wine Night. The answer was unanimously ‘no’. This was such a reassuring answer that I opened another bottle and toasted all of them.
And yes, I am aware that I am going to Hell. Or Hades. Or am doomed to come back in my next life as a stink-bug with horrible Karma. Whatever. My mother’s prying actually forced me to do some swear-filled, wine-saturated self-discovery after my husband discovered a particularly pleasurable spot on my self. So, without further ado and because ‘brevity is the soul of wit’ here are my drunken and satisfied self-discovery discoveries:
I love: my daughters’ laughter and their father’s eyes. lazy Saturday mornings, consuming books, date nights with friends. being close to my family, being blessed with friends who are like family, the nostalgic longing I feel for those who are far away. long e-mails, any beach, sappy country songs and dancing all night at clubs I am much too old to attend. good food, rich desserts, trashy romance novels and deep philosophical discussions. shoes, earrings, expensive jeans and Coach handbags. my babies, my husband, my dog and the home we’ve all built together.
I enjoy: working in my garden, a smooth whiskey, a glass of wine with girlfriends, action movies where lots of stuff blows up and an excellent spa day. Walking our little white dog in the sunshine while pulling my girls in our big red wagon on the way to the park with the steep blue slide. Watching my big, strong, handsome husband walk our little white dog with her pink leash and collar. Listening to my girls’ delighted giggles as they watch their daddy pretend to be mad at the dog. Teaching my students, a sweaty workout, a well-decorated house. A perfectly planned party with good people.
I don’t particularly enjoy: cleaning up after a good party, the dog, the kids, my husband and any other creature who makes a mess in my house…most especially myself. Laundry. Anything involving me and my baby-blue, old-but-still-running Dodge P.O.S. minivan.
I want: to meet Matt Damon! a new car. definitely a tiled kitchen floor instead of our stained and torn linoleum and new granite countertops instead of ugly tile with geese-stamps on them (they came with the house). a trip to Maui would be nice and I’m always in need of a babysitter… Okay, seriously: I need all the people in my life, even—or especially—those whom I forget to tell; serenity and the chaos I have created; my belief that we, it, the world is GOOD and everyone can learn. Stuart—he’s better than old Matt Damon any day!
I loathe: cultivated ignorance. Ergo, I embarked on this rather painful little Self-Discovery journey. Oprah better fucking call!
I need: a night alone with my husband so we can drink good wine and fuck like crazy.
Actually, I have a major bone to pick with that damn book: it made me hungry. And I don’t like to eat. I resent all those passages rhapsodizing about yummy food: I think I gained four pounds from chapter ten alone!
It did not have the same effect on my spiritual life. I try to pray, really, I do. But my stupid brain doesn’t cooperate and, instead of achieving a nice zen-like state and becoming one with God or Zeus or the Universe, I start reviewing my to-do list. And then I start swearing.
As for Love, well, THAT I didn’t need any inspiration for! As will be revealed, I am apparently a slut. At least according to my mom.
Still, the novel did inspire me to write my own super-successful Woman’s Self-Discovery Novel that then becomes an International best-seller and then an Oscar-buzzing movie staring Julia Roberts….OK, that SO is not going to happen. For so many reasons:
1. I don’t much want to discover anything else about myself. I was a psychology major and know for a fact that self-discovery is a pretty darn painful process. I like my current ignorant bliss. I know myself ok—about as well as I know my neighbor, Rob—and just like I don’t want to know why Rob insists upon mowing his lawn in purple speedos and black hi-tops, I also don’t really want to know why I periodically get neurotic and demand tons of emotional reassurance of everyone from my husband to my friends to my butcher.
2. Self-discovery requires Alone Time. Lots of it. I don’t get alone time. Ever. I try to steal some every once in a while by locking myself in the bathroom. If I were ever faced with serious chunks of alone time I know exactly how I’d fill it: with a million books, a cask of wine and Matt Damon to rub my feet while I read and sipped. When I got relaxed enough, I’d take a nap. Then I’d wake up and make use of Matt Damon for more than a foot rub (wink wink). Then I’d repeat. I could probably keep that up for, oh, ever!
3. If I did discover myself, I’d probably discover that I’m a crappy writer (do I HAVE my own agent???) and so I’d stop writing which would never lead to that best-selling adapted for movie-format novel.
4. Besides, I’d rather be played by Angelina Jolie. Julie Roberts is amazing and gorgeous, but she’s just too GOOD to be me. Angie is a lot more my style. Make of that what you will.
The sucky thing about trying to avoid Self-Discovery is that others insist upon enlightening you, whether you desire it or not. Specifically, Mothers delight in this. Being a mother myself, I understand. We love our children and want the best for them. And we often define ‘the best for them’ as ‘whatever conduct we ourselves approve of.” Not surprisingly to those reading this, my own conduct is a bit of a trial to my poor sainted mother.
Recently, she asked me if I was having an affair.
I have no idea where she got this idea. Actually, I do: I was spotted at Costco with a Man-Who-Is-Not-My-Husband. This being a small town, the gossip mill went into hyperdrive and soon my mother was informed by no fewer than 5 ‘friends’ that her slutty daughter had been spotted loading 20 pounds of butter in aisle 10 of Costco with a blonde man. To set the record straight, we were buying food for the Senior Pancake Breakfast. Bulk-quantities of saturated fat would not be what made me horny enough to break my marriage vows.
Besides, when the fuck would I pencil an affair into my busy schedule? Remember, I multi-task my poop-time by also making it my daily alone-time. And that is just WRONG. So, unless my boyfriend wants to get busy in the bathroom, I’m not quite sure when I can fit him in. Sorry, boys.
However, this apparently means my mother thinks I’m a slut. Ok, Ok…I WAS a slut. Had I been born with a penis, I’d have been the kind of legendary collegiate Player all men like to believe they were. But that was long ago, before Stu, crow’s feet, minivans and stretch marks. These days I’m only a femme fatale in my day dreams. And then when I’m all nice and horny from those day dreams I go home and make sweet, sweet love to my husband.
Or naughty love. Or hard, fast, sexy love. Or slow, drawn out love. Or…well, you get the point. My husband is now the focus of all of my slut-like tendencies.
Unless Matt Damon shows up with wine, a book and offers to rub my feet. But back to discovering myself…
The fact that my own mother thinks I'm a whore did not send me running off to the nearest priest or Freudian psychologist. It just led me to swear.
I didn’t just ‘swear’. No ‘oh, darn’, ‘shoot’, or even, ‘shit’. No, I went for the world’s most PERFECT word. FUCK.
There is no greater word in the English language. I would argue that there is no greater word in ANY language. Any conjugation of the word is immensely satisfying: fuck. Fucker. Fucking. It also functions as the perfect split to any infinitive. As in, ‘to split an infinitive’ just becomes a bit…jazzier…when split with the perfect interjection: ‘to FUCKING split an infinitive!” And yes, that is my split infinitive lecture at my public high school in my conservative small town. Sue me. Or fire me. Whatever.
Fuck you.
Anyway, after indulging in extensive swear-therapy, I turned to my therapy of choice: wine.
This led my poor mom to ask me, ‘honey, do you have a drinking problem?”
Huh. I don’t know. I was too busy enjoying my chardonnay to think about it at the time. Later, I did what all smart women do when asked a self-discovery question they can’t answer: I asked my girl friends at our next Wine Night. The answer was unanimously ‘no’. This was such a reassuring answer that I opened another bottle and toasted all of them.
And yes, I am aware that I am going to Hell. Or Hades. Or am doomed to come back in my next life as a stink-bug with horrible Karma. Whatever. My mother’s prying actually forced me to do some swear-filled, wine-saturated self-discovery after my husband discovered a particularly pleasurable spot on my self. So, without further ado and because ‘brevity is the soul of wit’ here are my drunken and satisfied self-discovery discoveries:
I love: my daughters’ laughter and their father’s eyes. lazy Saturday mornings, consuming books, date nights with friends. being close to my family, being blessed with friends who are like family, the nostalgic longing I feel for those who are far away. long e-mails, any beach, sappy country songs and dancing all night at clubs I am much too old to attend. good food, rich desserts, trashy romance novels and deep philosophical discussions. shoes, earrings, expensive jeans and Coach handbags. my babies, my husband, my dog and the home we’ve all built together.
I enjoy: working in my garden, a smooth whiskey, a glass of wine with girlfriends, action movies where lots of stuff blows up and an excellent spa day. Walking our little white dog in the sunshine while pulling my girls in our big red wagon on the way to the park with the steep blue slide. Watching my big, strong, handsome husband walk our little white dog with her pink leash and collar. Listening to my girls’ delighted giggles as they watch their daddy pretend to be mad at the dog. Teaching my students, a sweaty workout, a well-decorated house. A perfectly planned party with good people.
I don’t particularly enjoy: cleaning up after a good party, the dog, the kids, my husband and any other creature who makes a mess in my house…most especially myself. Laundry. Anything involving me and my baby-blue, old-but-still-running Dodge P.O.S. minivan.
I want: to meet Matt Damon! a new car. definitely a tiled kitchen floor instead of our stained and torn linoleum and new granite countertops instead of ugly tile with geese-stamps on them (they came with the house). a trip to Maui would be nice and I’m always in need of a babysitter… Okay, seriously: I need all the people in my life, even—or especially—those whom I forget to tell; serenity and the chaos I have created; my belief that we, it, the world is GOOD and everyone can learn. Stuart—he’s better than old Matt Damon any day!
I loathe: cultivated ignorance. Ergo, I embarked on this rather painful little Self-Discovery journey. Oprah better fucking call!
I need: a night alone with my husband so we can drink good wine and fuck like crazy.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Confession: I’m very bendy!
Yes, Friends fans, that’s a shout-out to Phoebe.
It’s also (quite fortunately, if you’re my husband) very true. I have ample evidence. Most of it is not appropriate for this blog. But never fear, dear readers, I can hint and suggest and tease without breaking the public decency codes!
I’m not going to cite my ability to do the splits, or put my leg over my head, or hold a lovely pretzel-like contortion for eternal yoga breaths. But, of course, I can do all of those things. Not quite as easily as smoothly as I could before pregnancy and childbirth made my hips expand two extra inches…but I can still tuck my ankles behind my ears when I’m motivated enough to do so.
The last vestiges of my cheerleading glory days aside, my first piece of evidence is my ability to act out a very common female fantasy: hot sex with a man in uniform! As with most fantasies, the actual reality can be a bit tricky. For as sexy as a cop—especially one as gorgeous and well-built as mine-- in full uniform looks, the uniform itself is NOT conducive to sex.
The gun belt weighs at least 15 pounds and is bulky and awkward. It is slung low on the hips, directly over the important area, and loaded down with gun, ammunition, handcuffs, flashlight, radio and whatever else, all jutting out from the critical area in awkward and potentially fatal directions. The leg holster holds another gun or a taser—two things you do NOT want to accidentally jostle-- and the radio headset snakes up his back to his shoulder. On his feet are full combat boots laced high up on the leg and concealed somewhere upon his person is a loaded back-up weapon, maybe a knife or two. And, of course, the Kevlar bullet-proof vest is heavy and thick and prevents both a bullet from piercing the skin…and the wearer from feeling anything from neck to crotch.
A woman seeking to love a man in uniform has to coordinate her moves carefully, avoiding the loaded and cocked weapons, the tangle of the handcuffs (these are NOT the fun fuzzy kind for play). Perhaps most importantly, one must avoid triggering the radio. Some things should not be heard by the entire Force. Like when a horny woman is playing with one of the County’s Finest’s best weapons…and hoping to make it discharge.
None of this hinders me. I am a very short, petite woman. My man is at least a foot taller than me, more so in his boots. This only adds to the necessity of extreme flexibility. With the ease of long practice, I can rise on my bare toes, snake my arms around his neck and press fully against him, wiggling to avoid the jut of his gun, to settle him in the cradle of my hips. I can wrap my little legs around him, above the gun belt, under the vest, and hang on for the inevitable discharge. Mmmm.
My husband in uniform isn’t the only thing I can wrap my legs around. I’m also fairly adept at pole dancing. Yes, you read that right: I have mastered the pole!
Ok, ‘mastered’ may be a bit of an exaggeration. The truth is, I have a new and profound respect for pole dancers! It is HARD to climb up what is really a fireman’s pole, get inverted, swing one’s legs about and somehow look sexy doing so. Still, several girlfriends and I, bored with the endless miles we log racing off to nowhere on an elliptical machine or treadmill, signed up for ‘vertical core alignment class’; i.e.: pole dancing. We thought it would be a fun way to get some exercise, maybe pick up a tip or two for our own private performances.
The first session kicked my ass. Seriously. I couldn’t raise my arms for days. Trying to satisfy the sexy requirments of that damn huge pole did more for sculpting Jennifer Anniston-esque arms than Jill-the-Norwegian-Personal-Trainer accomplished in six sweaty nintey-minute sessions.
Even more humiliating, two decidedly chunky-and-frumpy girls and one 65-year-old grandma totally bested me and my 3 Hot Minivan Mom friends. We flailed about, swinging around the pole like 4th grade boys at recess (NOT sexy!) while they strutted, flipped, contorted…all with pointed toes and pornographically arched backs…to the beat of Al Green.
When I arrived home, Stuart asked me, predictable male smirk in place, if I had learned anything. I showed him the baseball-sized bruise on my inner thigh (a result of less-than-adequate tricep strength, according to Pole Dancing Grandma) and slunk into the bathroom to soak my aching bones.
Still, we returned. If Grandma and Chunky Girls (who didn’t even have manicures, pedicures OR cute work-out outfits!) could do it, damn it so could we! We decided our main problem was the music. Who feels sexy to Al Green? Personally, I just feel faintly nauseated…the way I feel whenever creepy old Uncle George drinks too much whiskey at family gatherings and forgets that he’s, well, my UNCLE, and therefore not genetically acceptable for sexual advances. I know an unfortunate amount about these things as my family’s Southern. At my first (and last) Mississippi family reunion, I was hit on by a very nice boy who informed me, “we’re just kissing cousins, honey!” as he tried to kiss me, his cousin! In case you’re not from the South, ‘kissing cousins’ simply means we are related, but our branches are far enough apart on the family tree to ensure that our children would not resemble a Picasso...BUT WE ARE STILL AT THE SAME FAMILY REUNION! (By the way, slimy Uncle George is not ANYTHING acceptable for sexual advances, unless buckets of money, mushy bellies, bald heads and rheumy eyes do it for you…but the UNCLE bit adds a puke-in-my-mouth element.)
Back to me learning how to pole dance. After our initial humiliation, we HMMs were determined to conquer the Pole: to spin, swing, strut and prove that strippers have nothing on us beautiful, married, working, accomplished small-town mothers!
The next class, we all downed a couple of glasses of wine first and brought the Pussy Cat Dolls for non-nausiating inspiration. Loosen up my Buttons loosened up my joints, and I found that spinning around the pole isn’t all THAT hard. Carol did a headstand, her long, sexy legs entwining about the long, shiny pole. Brook climbed it and slowly eased her way down, her back arched in a way that drew fantastic attention to her well-toned ass. Me...well...I’m good at walking around the pole.
Don’t laugh, there’s an art to it. And once I’ve walked around it a few times, stroking its length with my pretty, well-manicured hands as if it is Matt Damon wearing a Russian Silver Mink ballkini, I lift my leg slowly over my head and stroke the length with my pointed pedicured toe, as if I were removing that silky, skimpy ballkini. Eat your heart out, boys!
For the record, I have only performed for the women in my class. Stuart has talked about installing a pole in the bedroom, but I don’t think it’ll match my décor. I just like the knowledge that, should the recession get any worse, I can simply take my sassy self on down to Reno and apply for a job at the Wild Orchid or Gentleman’s Club.
Or, even better, next time I take my babies for a visit to the local fire station, maybe I’ll ask those sexy men in uniform if I can take a little spin on their pole!
It’s also (quite fortunately, if you’re my husband) very true. I have ample evidence. Most of it is not appropriate for this blog. But never fear, dear readers, I can hint and suggest and tease without breaking the public decency codes!
I’m not going to cite my ability to do the splits, or put my leg over my head, or hold a lovely pretzel-like contortion for eternal yoga breaths. But, of course, I can do all of those things. Not quite as easily as smoothly as I could before pregnancy and childbirth made my hips expand two extra inches…but I can still tuck my ankles behind my ears when I’m motivated enough to do so.
The last vestiges of my cheerleading glory days aside, my first piece of evidence is my ability to act out a very common female fantasy: hot sex with a man in uniform! As with most fantasies, the actual reality can be a bit tricky. For as sexy as a cop—especially one as gorgeous and well-built as mine-- in full uniform looks, the uniform itself is NOT conducive to sex.
The gun belt weighs at least 15 pounds and is bulky and awkward. It is slung low on the hips, directly over the important area, and loaded down with gun, ammunition, handcuffs, flashlight, radio and whatever else, all jutting out from the critical area in awkward and potentially fatal directions. The leg holster holds another gun or a taser—two things you do NOT want to accidentally jostle-- and the radio headset snakes up his back to his shoulder. On his feet are full combat boots laced high up on the leg and concealed somewhere upon his person is a loaded back-up weapon, maybe a knife or two. And, of course, the Kevlar bullet-proof vest is heavy and thick and prevents both a bullet from piercing the skin…and the wearer from feeling anything from neck to crotch.
A woman seeking to love a man in uniform has to coordinate her moves carefully, avoiding the loaded and cocked weapons, the tangle of the handcuffs (these are NOT the fun fuzzy kind for play). Perhaps most importantly, one must avoid triggering the radio. Some things should not be heard by the entire Force. Like when a horny woman is playing with one of the County’s Finest’s best weapons…and hoping to make it discharge.
None of this hinders me. I am a very short, petite woman. My man is at least a foot taller than me, more so in his boots. This only adds to the necessity of extreme flexibility. With the ease of long practice, I can rise on my bare toes, snake my arms around his neck and press fully against him, wiggling to avoid the jut of his gun, to settle him in the cradle of my hips. I can wrap my little legs around him, above the gun belt, under the vest, and hang on for the inevitable discharge. Mmmm.
My husband in uniform isn’t the only thing I can wrap my legs around. I’m also fairly adept at pole dancing. Yes, you read that right: I have mastered the pole!
Ok, ‘mastered’ may be a bit of an exaggeration. The truth is, I have a new and profound respect for pole dancers! It is HARD to climb up what is really a fireman’s pole, get inverted, swing one’s legs about and somehow look sexy doing so. Still, several girlfriends and I, bored with the endless miles we log racing off to nowhere on an elliptical machine or treadmill, signed up for ‘vertical core alignment class’; i.e.: pole dancing. We thought it would be a fun way to get some exercise, maybe pick up a tip or two for our own private performances.
The first session kicked my ass. Seriously. I couldn’t raise my arms for days. Trying to satisfy the sexy requirments of that damn huge pole did more for sculpting Jennifer Anniston-esque arms than Jill-the-Norwegian-Personal-Trainer accomplished in six sweaty nintey-minute sessions.
Even more humiliating, two decidedly chunky-and-frumpy girls and one 65-year-old grandma totally bested me and my 3 Hot Minivan Mom friends. We flailed about, swinging around the pole like 4th grade boys at recess (NOT sexy!) while they strutted, flipped, contorted…all with pointed toes and pornographically arched backs…to the beat of Al Green.
When I arrived home, Stuart asked me, predictable male smirk in place, if I had learned anything. I showed him the baseball-sized bruise on my inner thigh (a result of less-than-adequate tricep strength, according to Pole Dancing Grandma) and slunk into the bathroom to soak my aching bones.
Still, we returned. If Grandma and Chunky Girls (who didn’t even have manicures, pedicures OR cute work-out outfits!) could do it, damn it so could we! We decided our main problem was the music. Who feels sexy to Al Green? Personally, I just feel faintly nauseated…the way I feel whenever creepy old Uncle George drinks too much whiskey at family gatherings and forgets that he’s, well, my UNCLE, and therefore not genetically acceptable for sexual advances. I know an unfortunate amount about these things as my family’s Southern. At my first (and last) Mississippi family reunion, I was hit on by a very nice boy who informed me, “we’re just kissing cousins, honey!” as he tried to kiss me, his cousin! In case you’re not from the South, ‘kissing cousins’ simply means we are related, but our branches are far enough apart on the family tree to ensure that our children would not resemble a Picasso...BUT WE ARE STILL AT THE SAME FAMILY REUNION! (By the way, slimy Uncle George is not ANYTHING acceptable for sexual advances, unless buckets of money, mushy bellies, bald heads and rheumy eyes do it for you…but the UNCLE bit adds a puke-in-my-mouth element.)
Back to me learning how to pole dance. After our initial humiliation, we HMMs were determined to conquer the Pole: to spin, swing, strut and prove that strippers have nothing on us beautiful, married, working, accomplished small-town mothers!
The next class, we all downed a couple of glasses of wine first and brought the Pussy Cat Dolls for non-nausiating inspiration. Loosen up my Buttons loosened up my joints, and I found that spinning around the pole isn’t all THAT hard. Carol did a headstand, her long, sexy legs entwining about the long, shiny pole. Brook climbed it and slowly eased her way down, her back arched in a way that drew fantastic attention to her well-toned ass. Me...well...I’m good at walking around the pole.
Don’t laugh, there’s an art to it. And once I’ve walked around it a few times, stroking its length with my pretty, well-manicured hands as if it is Matt Damon wearing a Russian Silver Mink ballkini, I lift my leg slowly over my head and stroke the length with my pointed pedicured toe, as if I were removing that silky, skimpy ballkini. Eat your heart out, boys!
For the record, I have only performed for the women in my class. Stuart has talked about installing a pole in the bedroom, but I don’t think it’ll match my décor. I just like the knowledge that, should the recession get any worse, I can simply take my sassy self on down to Reno and apply for a job at the Wild Orchid or Gentleman’s Club.
Or, even better, next time I take my babies for a visit to the local fire station, maybe I’ll ask those sexy men in uniform if I can take a little spin on their pole!
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Confession: this one is a threesome...
Confession: it is deep
I have a hole.
It is gaping
And aching
And deep and wide
And unfillable.
I tried to fill it with him,
But it wasn’t his hole to fill
And he had even fewer resources to offer
So I was angry and disappointed and hurt
And the hole got deeper
The edges more slippery than before.
I bridged it with work
And the kids
And hobbies and crafts
And the quiet mental reassurances we women tell ourselves about our emptinesses—
--we don’t call them lies, although they are—
and they are empty lies, too.
I stayed busy
I got bored
I made friends and filled my days with a whirlwind of activities:
I exercised, I gardened.
I baked and read and wrote and drove and cleaned
And continued the in and out and here and there of the typical lonely wife’s day
A day of children’s laughter and slightly melancholy friendships
A day of a simple, shared, quiet look of empathetic understanding
With a woman who also has a hole
We all do, you know.
We all do.
The nights I couldn’t do anything about
Except to stare into the darkness,
Listen to the whirrrr of the fan
The clang of the house
The somehow desolate sound of a helicopter passing over
And count the moments until dawn
Sometimes I forget about the hole
Sometimes I simply accept its existence
Sometimes I hate it
Sometimes I think it makes me stronger
Always I wish I could fill it.
But I don’t think it’s going away,
This hole of mine
I don’t know if it’s always been there and I just now noticed.
Or if it suddenly appeared,
A great sink hole in my psyche
As I grew up.
I do know that its origins don’t matter,
Only the eternity of its duration.
I have a hole.
It is gaping
And aching
And deep and wide
And unfillable
And it hurts.
Confession: I am A Woman who Waits
I am a woman who Waits.
I Wait through wars and shifts and training and long lonely nights.
I Wait for phone calls and texts and e-mails and conversations
and for moments, for chances, for caresses, kisses and sighs.
I Wait alone and with the kids and with women
and with the dry pages of a book and the cold chatter of late-night TV.
I Wait with anger and with patience and with pain and with solitude.
Sometimes, I Wait with peace.
I Wait…
like my mother and my grandmothers and all of the sisters and daughters throughout time
…for my men.
I Wait for my father. For I was born a girl and he was born a man and we cannot overcome that gap despite like and respect and familial love and worship and need.
I Wait for my other self, my love who is mine but not. I wait while he fights and loves and struggles and learns and screams and cries and I cannot often Wait with him because of distance and time and rules and…
I Wait for my love, my half with whom I share a home and children and the big triumphs and the small chores and the millions of little secrets born of Vows.
I Wait while he struggles and protects and grows.
I Wait through all the dinners with an empty chair and the weekends and the children’s questions and the stories and the bedtimes and the tears and the nights with the cold side of the bed.
I swore I would never Wait.
As a young woman, I vowed to Have.
Eagerly, I grasped all shiny Possibility in my fists.
Greedily, I clutched all Experience immediately to my breast.
Hungrily, I drank of all,
gulped and swallowed and consumed.
For I despised Women Who Wait.
I scoffed at their quiet patience, felt pity for their competent aloneness, imagined shame in their accepting smiles and yearning eyes.
I vowed I would never Wait.
But we women, we grow. And we learn. And some vows are broken by the desire and need and want to keep Vows. And our men Leave and fight and protect and earn and provide. And we Stay and feed the children and build the home and earn the money and drive the endless to-and-from and cook the dinners and listen to the days and pray and dream and…
Wait,
Wait,
Wait.
through the seconds.
the moments.
the days.
the nights.
We Wait for those who Go,
Our wise Grandmothers knew, there is pride in being able to Wait.
Because MY men who Go
They must have a soft place, a love, a reason to Return.
And so I Wait.
Confession: Sometimes, the hole is filled, the wait rewarded.
I am a mother, wife, teacher, student, daughter, friend, enemy, leader, follower, mentor, employee, small-town community member, sister, lover.
I soothe and cherish and care and love.
I organize and clean and tidy and do all the little things that need to be done.
I schedule. I accept, I decline.
I exercise and lounge and laugh and cry and talk and listen.
I embrace the loud and bask in the silence.
I have worked and sweated and pushed and persevered and reached that perfection that I first conceived…then defined…and…finally…achieved.
And no where in all of that is an ‘I’, a woman, a person, a ME.
And I chose this, created it, cultivated it. I take pride in it, revel in it, bask in the chaos and the scurry and the hard and the easy and the work and the fun.
But not some nights.
Some nights, I want to set aside the burden, like an over-stuffed backpack, just slide it off my shoulders, ease it onto the floor and walk away. Just for a moment.
For a moment feel the lightness of me.
This is the reason I so cherish when we love. Because, for that time, I am not a teacher, mother, daughter, sister. I am just a woman. The time is surreal, ethereal, removed. The endless loop of ‘needs’ and ‘shoulds’ and ‘must dos’ stops. The compartments that hold pick-ups and drop-offs and schedules and shopping lists and could-haves and coming-ups and laundry and chores and job worries and motherly concerns and wifely issues are not only closed, they do not exist in my head.
For that time, I simply am.
Thought is gone.
Identity is gone.
I can only touch, taste, stroke, feel.
Remember choosing him, him choosing me.
Make the choice again.
There is only the sensation of skin, of warm breath, of hard and soft and wet. There is only the sound of sighs and gasps and commands and cries. There is only ecstasy, and release, and anticipation and that giddy sense of yes and please and again.
And because of the pleasure, the intense, searing, repeating pleasure, there is a deep connection, a lightness of being.
The wait is rewarded.
The hole is filled.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Confession: Yeah, I can handle the big ones!
I back in very well. It’s simply a matter of taking it slowly, making minute adjustments, easing it in carefully. Oh, and mirrors generally enhance the experience.
I am, of course, talking about trailers.
Stu and I just got back from my family’s annual camping trip in Yosemite. Because he was coming off a grave shift the morning we left, I drove Stu’s huge Chevy truck. And pulled the trailer down 395, up Tioga pass and backed 'er right in to site 25.
This act, apparently, makes me as irresistibly sexy as Megan Fox draped across a motorcycle. Just call me Trailer-Barbie. Actually, scratch that: Trailer Barbie probably doesn’t have any teeth. How about Bad-Ass Camping Barbie? But with brown hair.
I’m not proclaiming my sexiness without lots of proof: I was hit on every time we stopped. The men hitting on me were invariably in their own huge trucks towing something. As I pulled into a parking lot, one or more of them would glance at my huge rig, do a double-take when they noticed me at the wheel and then saunter up, John Wayne style, and open the conversation, “So, what’s she weigh fully loaded?” “What’s the full weight that Chevy can handle?” “You pulling up Tioga in that rig?” “What kinda mileage you getting?”
When I answered these questions competently, interest would spark in their eyes and they’d lean a little closer. At this point, I generally found a way to work into the conversation that another thing fully loaded in the truck was Stu’s off-duty weapon. Bad call…a small woman driving a huge rig pulling a heavy trailer and talking about loaded weapons is, apparently, irresistible to the sort of men who frequent pull-thru gas stations. Ladies, if you are one of those women constantly bemoaning your inability to find guys in bars, the grocery store, etc., just come with me! I coulda had at least 3 marriage offers right there. And these men are good guys. They fish or hunt or boat or camp on the weekends and obviously have money; big trucks and trailers are not cheap. Nor is the price of gas or diesel required to keep those suckers moving. These men all obviously possess enviable disposable income, if somewhat questionable grooming habits.
Seriously, I got more attention in my ratty tank top and tennis shoes in a 395 parking lot than I did in my cleavage-enhancing dress and stilettos in a Vegas club.
I don't understand what all the fuss is about; towing a trailer while driving forward is fairly easy. One needs only to drive and look carefully before changing lanes. Although, Stuart may respectfully disagree about the ‘ease’ of my driving.
I would argue that I only got the trailer air-borne once. And it wasn’t my fault. Stupid road had a huge bump that I didn’t see. Stu awoke when his ass left the seat…and the trailer left gravity. All was well…the trailer landed and we continued on as if nothing had happened. Was just like Dukes of Hazard or something. Look at me: I could be a stunt-driver! And Stuart could be a saint: he made no comment, just squinted his eyes as he does when counting silently to a million in order to avoid yelling at me.
If simply pulling a trailer is a turn-on to men, a woman preparing to back in a trailer is like Super-Viagra. The moment I pulled into the campground, men congregated. I had my pick of the litter. Old men, young men. Fat men, short men, handsome men, scary men. I sent out my siren's call with the rumble of my truck's engine and they literally came out of the bushes.
Not all of this is because I’m a smokin’ hot female. Entertainment is hard to come by while camping. You can sit and stare at the campfire. You can sit and stare at the trees. You can climb a big mountain and stare at the view. You can scratch bug bites, eat oddly-prepared food, drink river-chilled alcohol and generally pretend to have skipped the last hundred thousand years of evolution.
Or you can watch people destroy very expensive property by backing it into trees.
Good times.
Trailer Parking is a Camping Event. Stories are told (back in my day, trailers weighed more than the stuff kids pull these days), legends are created (no one has ever successfully backed into site 35), heroes are made (Nate backed that 31' sucker in around two rocks and a tree, then un-hooked, came around the other way, and slid that baby home!)
The all-time greatest was when I watched a guy scrape off the entire side of his bigger-than-my-second-apartment, $200,000 bus/RV on a tree. Thing peeled off like a tin-can. My dad sauntered over and offered him ducktape to hold the now-dragging shiny side-panel up.We still tell that one around the campfire at night.
Thus, I was not surprised that the men came out of the trees to watch me back it in. When it comes to trailer backing, besides being entertaining, every man’s an expert. Doesn’t matter if, in his real life, he’s actually a CPA who has never backed up anything larger than his jump-drive, if a trailer is being backed in, he’ll have an opinion on how it should be done.
And if the driver of that trailer happens to have breasts, well, shit, jump-drive-boy could do it better, faster, cleaner. Because having a penis makes you an expert at jamming stuff into tight narrow areas.
Huh. My ass.
Seems to me, having a penis should disqualify you from ever being allowed to ‘jam stuff in’…any where. Just look at how men use their penises. With complete indiscretion and disregard for size, compatibility or favorable environmental conditions. When penis-wielders see an opening, they take it! It generally takes a great deal instruction and training by a patient woman for a man to realize that the penis should not always be used as a battering ram to breach any available opening.
This 'just jam it in' male philosophy applies to more than sex. Men do not worry about proper placement of furniture, they simply plop the couch or, worse, recliner down in front of the TV and call the room ‘arranged’. Socks are thrown into drawers, all laundry is jammed—regardless of color or delicacy—into the washer, expanding guts are stuffed into decades-old, sizes-too-small pants.
And these indelicate, unrefined creatures think they're more genetically gifted at easing a large, awkward object into an impossibly narrow space that is difficult to access?
I think being a woman instantly qualifies us to back up trailers. Having a vagina means being very aware of the necessity for proper alignment, minute adjustments, proper preparation. Women know how to examine size, shape and available insertion area in order to accommodate without damage.
We’re also adept at taking care of this without any helpful assistance from men.
Thus, I was mortally offended that my all-penis audience insisted upon offering advice as I prepared to slip my trailer into the designated slot. Especially as the advice generally indicated that the men all thought I was slightly less intelligent than the rock I was attempting to avoid. This group behaved in typical, group-of-men-at-sporting-event style: cheering, cursing, questioning the decisions and calls as if their sagging beer-gut-showing selves could do any better.
This seriously annoyed me. I don’t like other men being involved when I go into reverse. Call me traditional, but I prefer to keep such things within my marriage.
You can tell a lot about a couple’s relationship and sex life by observing their trailer-parking strategies.
Some men simply insist upon doing it alone, banishing their wives to the sidelines while they take care of business. I understand this. Alone, you have full responsibility for everything; placement, necessary adjustments and speed. And you get to decide when you’ve successfully arrived without worrying about any one else's feelings.
Some men have their wives help, but fail to explain what it is they want. Thus, the wives hover nervously, ineffectively waving their arms about and trying to look interested and involved while their husbands grunt and curse and mutter about not being understood. When the trailer is finally parked, this type of couple will typically spend the rest of the day mutually frustrated and not speaking to each other.
The best couples, like Stu and I, communicate very effectively. We’ve perfected our technique and built up trust so that each of us is comfortable. It’s like a perfectly-choreographed and well-rehearsed ballet. Most importantly, Stuart is man enough to let me take the driver’s seat. With his loving help, I can take in any size—even the big ones.
“Forward slowly, yes, yes, now to the right. Uh huh….now, back slowly. To the left, the left, little bit, oh yeah…now straight, straight, right…goooood…again now….yes…faster now, uh huh, now ease it in…almost there….almost….keep it up…and….YES YES YES!!! We’re in!!!!”
I am, of course, talking about trailers.
Stu and I just got back from my family’s annual camping trip in Yosemite. Because he was coming off a grave shift the morning we left, I drove Stu’s huge Chevy truck. And pulled the trailer down 395, up Tioga pass and backed 'er right in to site 25.
This act, apparently, makes me as irresistibly sexy as Megan Fox draped across a motorcycle. Just call me Trailer-Barbie. Actually, scratch that: Trailer Barbie probably doesn’t have any teeth. How about Bad-Ass Camping Barbie? But with brown hair.
I’m not proclaiming my sexiness without lots of proof: I was hit on every time we stopped. The men hitting on me were invariably in their own huge trucks towing something. As I pulled into a parking lot, one or more of them would glance at my huge rig, do a double-take when they noticed me at the wheel and then saunter up, John Wayne style, and open the conversation, “So, what’s she weigh fully loaded?” “What’s the full weight that Chevy can handle?” “You pulling up Tioga in that rig?” “What kinda mileage you getting?”
When I answered these questions competently, interest would spark in their eyes and they’d lean a little closer. At this point, I generally found a way to work into the conversation that another thing fully loaded in the truck was Stu’s off-duty weapon. Bad call…a small woman driving a huge rig pulling a heavy trailer and talking about loaded weapons is, apparently, irresistible to the sort of men who frequent pull-thru gas stations. Ladies, if you are one of those women constantly bemoaning your inability to find guys in bars, the grocery store, etc., just come with me! I coulda had at least 3 marriage offers right there. And these men are good guys. They fish or hunt or boat or camp on the weekends and obviously have money; big trucks and trailers are not cheap. Nor is the price of gas or diesel required to keep those suckers moving. These men all obviously possess enviable disposable income, if somewhat questionable grooming habits.
Seriously, I got more attention in my ratty tank top and tennis shoes in a 395 parking lot than I did in my cleavage-enhancing dress and stilettos in a Vegas club.
I don't understand what all the fuss is about; towing a trailer while driving forward is fairly easy. One needs only to drive and look carefully before changing lanes. Although, Stuart may respectfully disagree about the ‘ease’ of my driving.
I would argue that I only got the trailer air-borne once. And it wasn’t my fault. Stupid road had a huge bump that I didn’t see. Stu awoke when his ass left the seat…and the trailer left gravity. All was well…the trailer landed and we continued on as if nothing had happened. Was just like Dukes of Hazard or something. Look at me: I could be a stunt-driver! And Stuart could be a saint: he made no comment, just squinted his eyes as he does when counting silently to a million in order to avoid yelling at me.
If simply pulling a trailer is a turn-on to men, a woman preparing to back in a trailer is like Super-Viagra. The moment I pulled into the campground, men congregated. I had my pick of the litter. Old men, young men. Fat men, short men, handsome men, scary men. I sent out my siren's call with the rumble of my truck's engine and they literally came out of the bushes.
Not all of this is because I’m a smokin’ hot female. Entertainment is hard to come by while camping. You can sit and stare at the campfire. You can sit and stare at the trees. You can climb a big mountain and stare at the view. You can scratch bug bites, eat oddly-prepared food, drink river-chilled alcohol and generally pretend to have skipped the last hundred thousand years of evolution.
Or you can watch people destroy very expensive property by backing it into trees.
Good times.
Trailer Parking is a Camping Event. Stories are told (back in my day, trailers weighed more than the stuff kids pull these days), legends are created (no one has ever successfully backed into site 35), heroes are made (Nate backed that 31' sucker in around two rocks and a tree, then un-hooked, came around the other way, and slid that baby home!)
The all-time greatest was when I watched a guy scrape off the entire side of his bigger-than-my-second-apartment, $200,000 bus/RV on a tree. Thing peeled off like a tin-can. My dad sauntered over and offered him ducktape to hold the now-dragging shiny side-panel up.We still tell that one around the campfire at night.
Thus, I was not surprised that the men came out of the trees to watch me back it in. When it comes to trailer backing, besides being entertaining, every man’s an expert. Doesn’t matter if, in his real life, he’s actually a CPA who has never backed up anything larger than his jump-drive, if a trailer is being backed in, he’ll have an opinion on how it should be done.
And if the driver of that trailer happens to have breasts, well, shit, jump-drive-boy could do it better, faster, cleaner. Because having a penis makes you an expert at jamming stuff into tight narrow areas.
Huh. My ass.
Seems to me, having a penis should disqualify you from ever being allowed to ‘jam stuff in’…any where. Just look at how men use their penises. With complete indiscretion and disregard for size, compatibility or favorable environmental conditions. When penis-wielders see an opening, they take it! It generally takes a great deal instruction and training by a patient woman for a man to realize that the penis should not always be used as a battering ram to breach any available opening.
This 'just jam it in' male philosophy applies to more than sex. Men do not worry about proper placement of furniture, they simply plop the couch or, worse, recliner down in front of the TV and call the room ‘arranged’. Socks are thrown into drawers, all laundry is jammed—regardless of color or delicacy—into the washer, expanding guts are stuffed into decades-old, sizes-too-small pants.
And these indelicate, unrefined creatures think they're more genetically gifted at easing a large, awkward object into an impossibly narrow space that is difficult to access?
I think being a woman instantly qualifies us to back up trailers. Having a vagina means being very aware of the necessity for proper alignment, minute adjustments, proper preparation. Women know how to examine size, shape and available insertion area in order to accommodate without damage.
We’re also adept at taking care of this without any helpful assistance from men.
Thus, I was mortally offended that my all-penis audience insisted upon offering advice as I prepared to slip my trailer into the designated slot. Especially as the advice generally indicated that the men all thought I was slightly less intelligent than the rock I was attempting to avoid. This group behaved in typical, group-of-men-at-sporting-event style: cheering, cursing, questioning the decisions and calls as if their sagging beer-gut-showing selves could do any better.
This seriously annoyed me. I don’t like other men being involved when I go into reverse. Call me traditional, but I prefer to keep such things within my marriage.
You can tell a lot about a couple’s relationship and sex life by observing their trailer-parking strategies.
Some men simply insist upon doing it alone, banishing their wives to the sidelines while they take care of business. I understand this. Alone, you have full responsibility for everything; placement, necessary adjustments and speed. And you get to decide when you’ve successfully arrived without worrying about any one else's feelings.
Some men have their wives help, but fail to explain what it is they want. Thus, the wives hover nervously, ineffectively waving their arms about and trying to look interested and involved while their husbands grunt and curse and mutter about not being understood. When the trailer is finally parked, this type of couple will typically spend the rest of the day mutually frustrated and not speaking to each other.
The best couples, like Stu and I, communicate very effectively. We’ve perfected our technique and built up trust so that each of us is comfortable. It’s like a perfectly-choreographed and well-rehearsed ballet. Most importantly, Stuart is man enough to let me take the driver’s seat. With his loving help, I can take in any size—even the big ones.
“Forward slowly, yes, yes, now to the right. Uh huh….now, back slowly. To the left, the left, little bit, oh yeah…now straight, straight, right…goooood…again now….yes…faster now, uh huh, now ease it in…almost there….almost….keep it up…and….YES YES YES!!! We’re in!!!!”
Monday, July 12, 2010
Confession: Sometimes, ‘almost’ counts!
“People pay a lot of money for ‘almost’.”
Stuart made this epiphanous observation while lounging, like a lazy king, on a large cabana. Sprawled beside him were two gorgeous, topless women who adore him, while others cavorted merrily in the sparkling pool before him. A cabana boy refilled his drink and fluffed the pillows behind his back while a cabana girl, a gauzy scarf almost covering her perfectly tight little ass, adjusted the fan so that His Laziness (and His best friend, happily esconced on the other side of the two nearly-naked women) wouldn’t get too hot in the Vegas sun.
Needless to say the boys wore huge grins with their sunglasses and board shorts. We girls wore sexy smiles...and not much else. No schedule, no time lines, no agenda. No kids. Almost Paradise.
We Nevadans should make Stu’s quote our motto. After all, most of our revenue comes from expertly and decadently providing the ultimate ‘almost’ experiences. The epicenter of the Almost is, of course, Las Vegas. And, although Stu and I like to consider ourselves highly evolved, metacognitive, self-actualized adults, we make an annual pilgrimage to this mecca of Almost-Dreams.
And no, I’m NOT going to tell you what we do there. “What happens in Vegas…”.
Besides, The Hangover has already been made.
Initially, I wanted to disagree with Stuart. I don’t like "almost". "Almost" makes me uncomfortable. "Almost" makes me twitchy. I generally seek to resolve any "Almosts" as quickly as possible. I like closure. I like completion. I like final acts and conclusions and grand crescendos that signal crashing finales.
But then I looked down at my almost-naked self and realized how sexy I felt. I’m not a prude (obviously), but total skinny-dipping generally makes me uncomfortable. I just don’t want sand or sunburn in the area where the sun (shouldn't!) shine! But being topless in the sun? Ahhh…that ‘almost’ is a wonderful, freeing tease. I felt like one of the heavy-lidded, full-lipped Guess models who are always almost bursting out of their tops. Not only did I feel sexy being topless myself, but I also enjoy looking at other women's breasts.
Yeah, I said it. Girls are hot. Cosmo calls it 'hetero-flexible'. I call it basic asthetics. I'd much rather look through my Victoria's Secret catalog than go see the Thunder from Down Under.
Isn’t the ‘almost’ the point of lingerie? The peek, the glimpse, the tease, the almost-naked that is often much, much better than totally-naked? Advertising has perfected the Almost. Almost naked, almost fornicating almost real girls and boys sell everything from motor oil to perfume. From this, savvy girls learn early on that an ‘almost’ glimpse of a pretty pair of panties, bra or forbidden flesh is guaranteed to get the attention of every man present.
The allure of the 'almost' is its lack of obviousness. It is the difference between sexy and sleazy, enticing and trampy, go-go dancer and whore. Sometimes, the "almost" is even less obvious. It can be found in peep-toe shoes, boyfriend-cut jeans, fade-to-black movie scenes and seemingly-innocent experiences.
Massages are a well-known--and often cliched-- example. A well-done massage can be the ultimate "almost" experience.
I have been getting massages since I was 12. In fact, I’m lucky enough to have received amazing treatments at many of the top resort locations in the world. This extensive research has shown that, low-quality Skinimax Porn aside, most masseuses are large, German women with bad skin and strong hands who answer to names like Helga. Not that I much care once those freakishly masculine hands start working out the knots that gather habitually at the base of my skull, but my illicit-sex fantasies don’t really run to women who could be subbed in for the Bears' defensive line.
On this most recent trip, I visited one of the many lovely and plush spas Vegas offers and signed up for an hour-long massage with ‘Sean’, expecting the ‘artist’ who greeted me in my robe to have sloppily-large breasts, limp hair and a very firm handshake. Boy oh boy, was I pleasantly surprised!
Sean was gorgeous. Sean was sexy. Sean immediately made my fertile little imagination turn hot and steamy. I was very, very excited that I was about to spend an hour almost-naked with Sean's hands all over my body.
Sean looked Spanish, or maybe South American, with dark hair he wore long (not usually my taste, but yummy on him), rich olive skin and deep brown eyes. When he took my hand, his long fingers stroked my tender palm. I think I may have whimpered. Later, I am certain I moaned shamelessly as I lay face-down on the massage bed, naked under a thin cotton sheet while those magic hands rubbed oil on my back, arms, legs, thighs….almost everywhere in slow, sensual circles.
Oh, yes…yes!…sometimes, almost is amazing. And well worth the $150 60-minute session.
Although ‘relaxing’ isn’t the adjective I’d ascribe to my interlude with Sean.
Taking it past sex (just for a moment, I promise!), the almost-death experience is equally compelling. Roller coasters, sky diving, scuba diving, cliff diving (really, any ‘diving’) all simulate the ‘I almost died’ adrenalin rush.
After all, in the subject of death, it’s the almost that counts.
All of these are exceedingly profitable. Want the feeling that you’re almost about-to-be fabulously wealthy? You can experience that thrill for just 25 cents! Drop your quarter into the machine, pull and for a few heady seconds, you’re just a spin or two from financial nirvana!
Want the feeing that the gorgeous and bendy woman doing impossibly acrobatic things to that big shiny pole desires you? Flash some cash and she’ll mimic almost having sex with you.
How about plummeting out of the sky? Couple hundred bones and some guy will strap you to his body and hurl himself—and you!!—out of an airplane. You get to free-fall for 2-3 breathless seconds before the parachute saves you from almost plunging into the ground. Or, if you prefer to take your thrills sitting down, $35 will buy you an all-day pass to the rollercoaster on the top of the New York New York casino where you almost fly off the edge of a super-high building while regretting drinking that last vodka-redbull before you climbed in.
There is serious money to be made in the ‘almost’.
Obviously, the examples are endless and would be fabulous fodder for a psychology thesis. Thankfully, I already wrote one and don’t have to ever do that again.
So, back to sex. Does the almost count in sex?
To answer, allow me to return to Vegas. Still tingling and glistening from my massage, I slithered down between my husband and our friends on our pool-side cabana. I could feel the slightly rough towel against my naked belly and breasts, the warm sun on my back and my husband’s hand on my thigh. Slowly, slowly stroking up and down, almost going too high, almost dipping in, almost breaking the code of public decency.
I spent most of the day almost having an orgasm.
And, when we returned to our hotel room, that almost was finally, amazingly, satisfyingly completed. Several times.
Priceless.
Stuart made this epiphanous observation while lounging, like a lazy king, on a large cabana. Sprawled beside him were two gorgeous, topless women who adore him, while others cavorted merrily in the sparkling pool before him. A cabana boy refilled his drink and fluffed the pillows behind his back while a cabana girl, a gauzy scarf almost covering her perfectly tight little ass, adjusted the fan so that His Laziness (and His best friend, happily esconced on the other side of the two nearly-naked women) wouldn’t get too hot in the Vegas sun.
Needless to say the boys wore huge grins with their sunglasses and board shorts. We girls wore sexy smiles...and not much else. No schedule, no time lines, no agenda. No kids. Almost Paradise.
We Nevadans should make Stu’s quote our motto. After all, most of our revenue comes from expertly and decadently providing the ultimate ‘almost’ experiences. The epicenter of the Almost is, of course, Las Vegas. And, although Stu and I like to consider ourselves highly evolved, metacognitive, self-actualized adults, we make an annual pilgrimage to this mecca of Almost-Dreams.
And no, I’m NOT going to tell you what we do there. “What happens in Vegas…”.
Besides, The Hangover has already been made.
Initially, I wanted to disagree with Stuart. I don’t like "almost". "Almost" makes me uncomfortable. "Almost" makes me twitchy. I generally seek to resolve any "Almosts" as quickly as possible. I like closure. I like completion. I like final acts and conclusions and grand crescendos that signal crashing finales.
But then I looked down at my almost-naked self and realized how sexy I felt. I’m not a prude (obviously), but total skinny-dipping generally makes me uncomfortable. I just don’t want sand or sunburn in the area where the sun (shouldn't!) shine! But being topless in the sun? Ahhh…that ‘almost’ is a wonderful, freeing tease. I felt like one of the heavy-lidded, full-lipped Guess models who are always almost bursting out of their tops. Not only did I feel sexy being topless myself, but I also enjoy looking at other women's breasts.
Yeah, I said it. Girls are hot. Cosmo calls it 'hetero-flexible'. I call it basic asthetics. I'd much rather look through my Victoria's Secret catalog than go see the Thunder from Down Under.
Isn’t the ‘almost’ the point of lingerie? The peek, the glimpse, the tease, the almost-naked that is often much, much better than totally-naked? Advertising has perfected the Almost. Almost naked, almost fornicating almost real girls and boys sell everything from motor oil to perfume. From this, savvy girls learn early on that an ‘almost’ glimpse of a pretty pair of panties, bra or forbidden flesh is guaranteed to get the attention of every man present.
The allure of the 'almost' is its lack of obviousness. It is the difference between sexy and sleazy, enticing and trampy, go-go dancer and whore. Sometimes, the "almost" is even less obvious. It can be found in peep-toe shoes, boyfriend-cut jeans, fade-to-black movie scenes and seemingly-innocent experiences.
Massages are a well-known--and often cliched-- example. A well-done massage can be the ultimate "almost" experience.
I have been getting massages since I was 12. In fact, I’m lucky enough to have received amazing treatments at many of the top resort locations in the world. This extensive research has shown that, low-quality Skinimax Porn aside, most masseuses are large, German women with bad skin and strong hands who answer to names like Helga. Not that I much care once those freakishly masculine hands start working out the knots that gather habitually at the base of my skull, but my illicit-sex fantasies don’t really run to women who could be subbed in for the Bears' defensive line.
On this most recent trip, I visited one of the many lovely and plush spas Vegas offers and signed up for an hour-long massage with ‘Sean’, expecting the ‘artist’ who greeted me in my robe to have sloppily-large breasts, limp hair and a very firm handshake. Boy oh boy, was I pleasantly surprised!
Sean was gorgeous. Sean was sexy. Sean immediately made my fertile little imagination turn hot and steamy. I was very, very excited that I was about to spend an hour almost-naked with Sean's hands all over my body.
Sean looked Spanish, or maybe South American, with dark hair he wore long (not usually my taste, but yummy on him), rich olive skin and deep brown eyes. When he took my hand, his long fingers stroked my tender palm. I think I may have whimpered. Later, I am certain I moaned shamelessly as I lay face-down on the massage bed, naked under a thin cotton sheet while those magic hands rubbed oil on my back, arms, legs, thighs….almost everywhere in slow, sensual circles.
Oh, yes…yes!…sometimes, almost is amazing. And well worth the $150 60-minute session.
Although ‘relaxing’ isn’t the adjective I’d ascribe to my interlude with Sean.
Taking it past sex (just for a moment, I promise!), the almost-death experience is equally compelling. Roller coasters, sky diving, scuba diving, cliff diving (really, any ‘diving’) all simulate the ‘I almost died’ adrenalin rush.
After all, in the subject of death, it’s the almost that counts.
All of these are exceedingly profitable. Want the feeling that you’re almost about-to-be fabulously wealthy? You can experience that thrill for just 25 cents! Drop your quarter into the machine, pull and for a few heady seconds, you’re just a spin or two from financial nirvana!
Want the feeing that the gorgeous and bendy woman doing impossibly acrobatic things to that big shiny pole desires you? Flash some cash and she’ll mimic almost having sex with you.
How about plummeting out of the sky? Couple hundred bones and some guy will strap you to his body and hurl himself—and you!!—out of an airplane. You get to free-fall for 2-3 breathless seconds before the parachute saves you from almost plunging into the ground. Or, if you prefer to take your thrills sitting down, $35 will buy you an all-day pass to the rollercoaster on the top of the New York New York casino where you almost fly off the edge of a super-high building while regretting drinking that last vodka-redbull before you climbed in.
There is serious money to be made in the ‘almost’.
Obviously, the examples are endless and would be fabulous fodder for a psychology thesis. Thankfully, I already wrote one and don’t have to ever do that again.
So, back to sex. Does the almost count in sex?
To answer, allow me to return to Vegas. Still tingling and glistening from my massage, I slithered down between my husband and our friends on our pool-side cabana. I could feel the slightly rough towel against my naked belly and breasts, the warm sun on my back and my husband’s hand on my thigh. Slowly, slowly stroking up and down, almost going too high, almost dipping in, almost breaking the code of public decency.
I spent most of the day almost having an orgasm.
And, when we returned to our hotel room, that almost was finally, amazingly, satisfyingly completed. Several times.
Priceless.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Confession: I love me a grand finale!
Fireworks remind me of sex.
Not just the big bang and the bright lights, but the entire event. The slight dread as you anticipate the hassle of engaging in this activity, the initial discomfort, the sense of disappointment when they begin and are, after-all, only loud bangs, then the growing sense of wonder and, finally, the completely absorbed excitement and awe by the time the grand finale erupts joyously into the night sky.
Yesterday was the Fourth of July. Our Nation’s birthday. And the only holiday, aside from SuperBowl Sunday, that the majority of America agrees to celebrate.
Being an All-American family with good ol’ All-American friends, we celebrated in traditional style. Had the backyard BBQ, the beer, the boys and babies and bikinis. Then the Great Debate: “are we going up to the fireworks?”
Lake Tahoe puts on an amazing fireworks show every 4th, ‘Lights on the Lake’. Only problem is, while I and my friends are Hot Minivan Moms, we are not RICH minivan moms. Thus, we live nowhere near the Lake. In fact, we don’t even live on the mountains between which the Lake is nestled. We live in the Valley, less romantically defined as the desert. The lake is all crystalline waters reflecting an azure sky framed by snow-capped peaks and spearing green pines. The valley is all tacky above-ground pools reflecting a hazy, smog-filled sky framed by brown sandy dirt and stout sagebrush.
Thus, going to the fireworks involves getting from the Valley to the Lake. An apt metaphor would be Adam and Eve trying to bust back IN to the Garden of Eden. Or the heathens trying to breach the walls to the Forbidden City. You get the idea.
Actually, it only requires a 20 minute drive up a one-lane, twisted, super-graded mountain highway behind semi-trucks, tourists who are afraid of turns and crazy-ass road bikers pedaling laboriously up a road meant only for non-human-powered vehicles (really, who are these fitness-obsessed fucks? I like a bike-ride too…to the local 7-11 for a Slurpee. Maybe on a nice bike-path to a beach and a Rum-Runner. Translation: I only ride a bike long distances if there is a tasty treat at the end!)
But here’s the thing. Hellish mountain passes aside, there is no way we can actually skip the fireworks. Fireworks are crack to kids. I don’t know why. I actually am pretty sure kids don’t really like fireworks. They’re loud and bright and crowded and occur way, way past bedtime. I think kids just like the idea of fireworks. Big explosions up in the sky, the titillating possibility that maybe something, or someone, else will explode.
And I think they like the fact that it’s such a grand pain in the ass for their parents.
Whatever the reason, it’s just not worth the foreverness of whining and complaining to MISS the fireworks. So, despite half-hearted bribes and tough talk amongst the parents, we end up making the trek up the mountain to see the fireworks every year.
Last night was no different. Loaded up the minivan with sunburned, over-tired children, blankets, water, cupcakes and enough glow-sticks, glow-necklaces and glow-bracelets to ensure that our children looked like walking Las Vegas casino signs.
Drove to the Lake. Got pulled over by Highway Patrol. Same guy managed to pull over all 3 minivans carrying cop wives. The few cops amongst us got us out of the tickets. Sad quota day for NHP-guy.
Found a parking spot. Unloaded cranky, over-excited kids. Played chicken with dangerous mountain highway and kids and wagons full of crap. Found a ‘great’ spot…half swamp, half hill, all dirt and pine needles…to set up ‘camp’.
Proceeded to wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Kids got cranky. Picked fights over the nine million glowy-things. Annoyed all the parents. Took a fieldtrip to the bathroom. Came back. Consumed cupcakes. Kids got sugar-happy and ran around like frantically glowing lightning bugs.
Still waiting.
Kids sugar-crash. Crawl into blankets and laps. Whine that it’s late and they’re tired and when will the fireworks start?
Parents are cranky and tired and whiney and when will the fireworks start?
We lose 2 kids in the bushes. Three little girls try to perfect the pee-squat.
We find the kids. The girls pee on their shoes.
Everyone wonders why the hell we thought this would be fun.
And then…a sizzle. Just a little pop. A solitary flare spears up into the dark sky, explodes in a dignified poof and disintegrates elegantly to the first strains of the National Anthem.
The kids stop whining and settle into laps. The parents breath deep sighs of relief, shift heavy children, and gaze upwards at the heavens.
The music swells, the lights dance. We ooh and ahh and are transported away from the cold and the sunburn and the mosquitoes and the to-lists marching through our brains. We sit, transfixed, and allow the booms, the pops, the cascades and the colors and the music and the joy overtake us.
I have the errant thought that fireworks look a lot like sperm as they climb into the sky.
Jennifer covers her ears to the booms. Kathleen stares in childhood wonder. Stuart puts his warm hand on my cheek.
And together we all forget about laundry and wars and bills and grudges and who ate the last pink cupcake and who broke vital promises and mosquito bites and illness and all the cares, big and small, and simply allow ourselves to be transported by the fireworks exploding in a star-studded sky over a fathomless black lake framed by eager American faces and grateful patriots.
Not just the big bang and the bright lights, but the entire event. The slight dread as you anticipate the hassle of engaging in this activity, the initial discomfort, the sense of disappointment when they begin and are, after-all, only loud bangs, then the growing sense of wonder and, finally, the completely absorbed excitement and awe by the time the grand finale erupts joyously into the night sky.
Yesterday was the Fourth of July. Our Nation’s birthday. And the only holiday, aside from SuperBowl Sunday, that the majority of America agrees to celebrate.
Being an All-American family with good ol’ All-American friends, we celebrated in traditional style. Had the backyard BBQ, the beer, the boys and babies and bikinis. Then the Great Debate: “are we going up to the fireworks?”
Lake Tahoe puts on an amazing fireworks show every 4th, ‘Lights on the Lake’. Only problem is, while I and my friends are Hot Minivan Moms, we are not RICH minivan moms. Thus, we live nowhere near the Lake. In fact, we don’t even live on the mountains between which the Lake is nestled. We live in the Valley, less romantically defined as the desert. The lake is all crystalline waters reflecting an azure sky framed by snow-capped peaks and spearing green pines. The valley is all tacky above-ground pools reflecting a hazy, smog-filled sky framed by brown sandy dirt and stout sagebrush.
Thus, going to the fireworks involves getting from the Valley to the Lake. An apt metaphor would be Adam and Eve trying to bust back IN to the Garden of Eden. Or the heathens trying to breach the walls to the Forbidden City. You get the idea.
Actually, it only requires a 20 minute drive up a one-lane, twisted, super-graded mountain highway behind semi-trucks, tourists who are afraid of turns and crazy-ass road bikers pedaling laboriously up a road meant only for non-human-powered vehicles (really, who are these fitness-obsessed fucks? I like a bike-ride too…to the local 7-11 for a Slurpee. Maybe on a nice bike-path to a beach and a Rum-Runner. Translation: I only ride a bike long distances if there is a tasty treat at the end!)
But here’s the thing. Hellish mountain passes aside, there is no way we can actually skip the fireworks. Fireworks are crack to kids. I don’t know why. I actually am pretty sure kids don’t really like fireworks. They’re loud and bright and crowded and occur way, way past bedtime. I think kids just like the idea of fireworks. Big explosions up in the sky, the titillating possibility that maybe something, or someone, else will explode.
And I think they like the fact that it’s such a grand pain in the ass for their parents.
Whatever the reason, it’s just not worth the foreverness of whining and complaining to MISS the fireworks. So, despite half-hearted bribes and tough talk amongst the parents, we end up making the trek up the mountain to see the fireworks every year.
Last night was no different. Loaded up the minivan with sunburned, over-tired children, blankets, water, cupcakes and enough glow-sticks, glow-necklaces and glow-bracelets to ensure that our children looked like walking Las Vegas casino signs.
Drove to the Lake. Got pulled over by Highway Patrol. Same guy managed to pull over all 3 minivans carrying cop wives. The few cops amongst us got us out of the tickets. Sad quota day for NHP-guy.
Found a parking spot. Unloaded cranky, over-excited kids. Played chicken with dangerous mountain highway and kids and wagons full of crap. Found a ‘great’ spot…half swamp, half hill, all dirt and pine needles…to set up ‘camp’.
Proceeded to wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Kids got cranky. Picked fights over the nine million glowy-things. Annoyed all the parents. Took a fieldtrip to the bathroom. Came back. Consumed cupcakes. Kids got sugar-happy and ran around like frantically glowing lightning bugs.
Still waiting.
Kids sugar-crash. Crawl into blankets and laps. Whine that it’s late and they’re tired and when will the fireworks start?
Parents are cranky and tired and whiney and when will the fireworks start?
We lose 2 kids in the bushes. Three little girls try to perfect the pee-squat.
We find the kids. The girls pee on their shoes.
Everyone wonders why the hell we thought this would be fun.
And then…a sizzle. Just a little pop. A solitary flare spears up into the dark sky, explodes in a dignified poof and disintegrates elegantly to the first strains of the National Anthem.
The kids stop whining and settle into laps. The parents breath deep sighs of relief, shift heavy children, and gaze upwards at the heavens.
The music swells, the lights dance. We ooh and ahh and are transported away from the cold and the sunburn and the mosquitoes and the to-lists marching through our brains. We sit, transfixed, and allow the booms, the pops, the cascades and the colors and the music and the joy overtake us.
I have the errant thought that fireworks look a lot like sperm as they climb into the sky.
Jennifer covers her ears to the booms. Kathleen stares in childhood wonder. Stuart puts his warm hand on my cheek.
And together we all forget about laundry and wars and bills and grudges and who ate the last pink cupcake and who broke vital promises and mosquito bites and illness and all the cares, big and small, and simply allow ourselves to be transported by the fireworks exploding in a star-studded sky over a fathomless black lake framed by eager American faces and grateful patriots.
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