I had forgotten tomorrow was Valentine's Day until I went to the supermarket this afternoon and saw all the massive displays of merchandise. Good thing I did, because I was able to pick up some cheap packs of Valentine-themed Skittles for G to hand out to her class. Oh, lucky teacher, locked up all day with 35 preteens who not only are under the influence of raging hormones, but also have a metric ton of pure grade-A sugar coursing through their bodies.
In other news, today we made a special trip to my office to collect unsold Girl Scout cookies so we could return them to the "cookie leader." G was extremely annoyed about having to interrupt her Sunday-afternoon schedule of sloth and indolence to go with me (I needed her to help carry boxes out to the car) until I reminded her that they were her cookies for her Girl Scout troop. I don't know if she was any happier about it after that, but at least she kept her displeasure to herself.
I'm feeling a little miffed at Girl Scouts in general after once again being the recipient of judgey looks from Girl Scout mothers when I went to pick G up at yesterday's International Fair event. I was wearing more or less what I usually wear--black velvet jeans, long-sleeved black shirt, black shoes with a skull-and-crossbones design, and black sunglasses--and all the Girl Scout mothers I passed on my way into the building stared at me as if I were going to steal their souls and eat their babies. These are clearly very sheltered women, because while I was the only person there in head-to-toe black, my clothes were still completely mainstream by almost any standards, nor did I have tattoos or piercings or a hair color not found in nature (and if I had, who cares), and yet you would have thought they'd seen Marilyn Manson stomping up the sidewalk toward the high-school gym.
I wonder what it's like to be that uptight. I also wonder what sort of reception is doled out to people who do have tattoos, piercings, etc., and daughters who are Girl Scouts. It can't be very nice.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
The long road to self-sufficiency
Half an hour after lunch ...
G: I'm hungry. Feed me.
Me: Nuh-uh. You are 12 years old. You can make your own snack.
G: Feed me!
Me: Have an apple. Make yourself a sandwich. Microwave something.
G: *gets out a loaf of bread* Fine! Are you happy now?
Me: I'm delighted.
G: Elated?
Me: Ecstatic.
G: Thrilled?
Me: Over the moon.
G: I'm hungry. Feed me.
Me: Nuh-uh. You are 12 years old. You can make your own snack.
G: Feed me!
Me: Have an apple. Make yourself a sandwich. Microwave something.
G: *gets out a loaf of bread* Fine! Are you happy now?
Me: I'm delighted.
G: Elated?
Me: Ecstatic.
G: Thrilled?
Me: Over the moon.
Wednesday, February 02, 2011
Six things make a post
1. G has missed two days of school this week due to a sore throat, fever and general yuck. She should be going back tomorrow, as a visit to the doctor today revealed that her throat is red, but probably not strep-laden. Her consolation prize for enduring the throat culture was a chocolate strawberry cupcake at the bakery next door to the doctor's office (which I'll bet just rakes in the cash from parents offering similar bribes consolation prizes), and then I decided I needed some consoling too and got an Oreo cupcake for myself. Mmmm.
3. A friend of mine texted me to see how G was and to say that he picked up a box of Ghirardelli brownie mix for me when he went to Costco at lunch. I texted back "thx for the brownie mix" and my phone autocorrected it to "thx for the brownish lox." G and I got a good laugh out of that one.
4. Last night, we whiled away half an hour by watching a DVD of this production of The Cat in the Hat, which was marvelously inventive and looked exactly like the book come to life. We then pondered the hypothetical answer to the question "If our mother could see this, oh, what would she say?" and decided that it would probably be "YOU TWO ARE IN SO MUCH TROUBLE" and perhaps also "WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT LETTING ANTHROPOMORPHIC ANIMALS INTO THE HOUSE?" (Although maybe not the latter since they do have a talking fish.)
5. Being at home for the last two days has motivated me to do two of my least favorite household chores: cleaning the bathrooms, and washing the cat bowls and cleaning the plastic mat that goes under them. I hate doing both of those things, but it's amazing how much better the whole place looks and feels after I do. Especially the cat area--something about spilled cat kibble on the floor creates very bad feng shui.
6. Being at home for the last two days has also apparently made me a very boring person who posts about boring things. Sorry about that. :P
3. A friend of mine texted me to see how G was and to say that he picked up a box of Ghirardelli brownie mix for me when he went to Costco at lunch. I texted back "thx for the brownie mix" and my phone autocorrected it to "thx for the brownish lox." G and I got a good laugh out of that one.
4. Last night, we whiled away half an hour by watching a DVD of this production of The Cat in the Hat, which was marvelously inventive and looked exactly like the book come to life. We then pondered the hypothetical answer to the question "If our mother could see this, oh, what would she say?" and decided that it would probably be "YOU TWO ARE IN SO MUCH TROUBLE" and perhaps also "WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT LETTING ANTHROPOMORPHIC ANIMALS INTO THE HOUSE?" (Although maybe not the latter since they do have a talking fish.)
5. Being at home for the last two days has motivated me to do two of my least favorite household chores: cleaning the bathrooms, and washing the cat bowls and cleaning the plastic mat that goes under them. I hate doing both of those things, but it's amazing how much better the whole place looks and feels after I do. Especially the cat area--something about spilled cat kibble on the floor creates very bad feng shui.
6. Being at home for the last two days has also apparently made me a very boring person who posts about boring things. Sorry about that. :P
Sunday, January 30, 2011
New Things: Month 1
So, at the beginning of this year I set a goal to do one thing every month that I've never done before. And for January, I got off to a good start by doing two things I'd never done before.
• I entered a fiction writing contest. I didn't win it, but considering that they had more than 1,000 entries and only chose five finalists, I don't feel too bad about this.
• I tried Peruvian food for the first time. It was chimbotanos (like a spicy potato stew) with brown rice and a side of fried yucca, and it was quite good, not to mention very different than what I expected Peruvian food to be like. Here's a photo:
I'm already eying a few potential activities for February, and will report on whatever I choose at the end of that month. So far, so good!
• I entered a fiction writing contest. I didn't win it, but considering that they had more than 1,000 entries and only chose five finalists, I don't feel too bad about this.
• I tried Peruvian food for the first time. It was chimbotanos (like a spicy potato stew) with brown rice and a side of fried yucca, and it was quite good, not to mention very different than what I expected Peruvian food to be like. Here's a photo:
I'm already eying a few potential activities for February, and will report on whatever I choose at the end of that month. So far, so good!
Saturday, January 22, 2011
Esta es la hora del gato
Last night G wanted me to lie down with her at bedtime. I agreed, and as I lay on her bed, half asleep in the dark, I suddenly heard a deep Spanish-sounding voice proclaim:
"This is the hour of the cat."
Needless to say, this gave me quite a start. Then I realized that it was this talking Puss in Boots, which we bought for G when she was five or six, and which she's long since outgrown and forgotten. Either Puss's batteries are finally running down after all these years, or he would like me to liberate him from the bottom of the basket of discarded stuffed animals in her closet. Maybe both.
On a side note, Puss's random speech reminded me of my mother's belief that P communicates with her through a similar battery-operated toy that she keeps in her family's car. She's been insisting for years that this thing speaks up at opportune moments and she knows, knows that P is somehow controlling it, to which I've always countered that a.) odd experiences aside (and I've had much odder ones than she has), I don't really believe that dead people can communicate with anyone; b.) if P could communicate with anyone, it would be with me and no one else; and c.) P was a direct-verging-on-blunt man who didn't fuck around, and if he had something to say, he'd find a direct way to say it. I imagine if I told my mother about Puss, she'd tell me that P was behind that somehow too. It's a good thing she can't see me roll my eyes over the phone.
"This is the hour of the cat."
Needless to say, this gave me quite a start. Then I realized that it was this talking Puss in Boots, which we bought for G when she was five or six, and which she's long since outgrown and forgotten. Either Puss's batteries are finally running down after all these years, or he would like me to liberate him from the bottom of the basket of discarded stuffed animals in her closet. Maybe both.
On a side note, Puss's random speech reminded me of my mother's belief that P communicates with her through a similar battery-operated toy that she keeps in her family's car. She's been insisting for years that this thing speaks up at opportune moments and she knows, knows that P is somehow controlling it, to which I've always countered that a.) odd experiences aside (and I've had much odder ones than she has), I don't really believe that dead people can communicate with anyone; b.) if P could communicate with anyone, it would be with me and no one else; and c.) P was a direct-verging-on-blunt man who didn't fuck around, and if he had something to say, he'd find a direct way to say it. I imagine if I told my mother about Puss, she'd tell me that P was behind that somehow too. It's a good thing she can't see me roll my eyes over the phone.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Well, when you put it that way
Me: You know, torturing Mommy is not a game we play.
G: But it is. It's exhilarating fun.
Darned smart kids and their big vocabularies!
The "torturing Mommy" conversation came about because G has lately rediscovered an interest in roughhousing with me. We used to do a lot of this when she was younger; it's something kids normally do with their dads, but because I was always the stronger parent, even when P was alive, I was the one who tossed her up in the air and wrestled with her and gave her horsey rides around the house. It was all good fun when she was little, but now she's 5'5" and weighs 125 pounds and she can just about take me down in a tussle. I've told her repeatedly that she's too big to play like that and she needs to stop before someone gets hurt, but she insists on running up from behind and tackling me, or trying to knock me down and sit on me. I'm at a disadvantage when it comes to defending myself because I don't want to hurt her by accident, so I deliberately hold back a bit. But she knows no such caution, and I usually end up yelling "I said STOP IT!" as I extract myself from a stranglehold.
It's a problem, not only because of the risk of grievous bodily injury (mine, not hers), but because it won't be long before she's bigger than I am, and I don't want her getting the idea that she can push me around physically. She's just playing now, like an overgrown puppy that doesn't know its own strength, but I can envision scenarios a few years down the road when she might not be. I guess my first step ought to be cutting her off as soon as she starts to play rough, and if that doesn't work, I'll have to think of some sort of consequence. This is certainly not an issue I expected to have when I gave birth to a little girl--though at 10 pounds, even newborn G probably could have played in the defensive line on a baby football team.
G: But it is. It's exhilarating fun.
Darned smart kids and their big vocabularies!
The "torturing Mommy" conversation came about because G has lately rediscovered an interest in roughhousing with me. We used to do a lot of this when she was younger; it's something kids normally do with their dads, but because I was always the stronger parent, even when P was alive, I was the one who tossed her up in the air and wrestled with her and gave her horsey rides around the house. It was all good fun when she was little, but now she's 5'5" and weighs 125 pounds and she can just about take me down in a tussle. I've told her repeatedly that she's too big to play like that and she needs to stop before someone gets hurt, but she insists on running up from behind and tackling me, or trying to knock me down and sit on me. I'm at a disadvantage when it comes to defending myself because I don't want to hurt her by accident, so I deliberately hold back a bit. But she knows no such caution, and I usually end up yelling "I said STOP IT!" as I extract myself from a stranglehold.
It's a problem, not only because of the risk of grievous bodily injury (mine, not hers), but because it won't be long before she's bigger than I am, and I don't want her getting the idea that she can push me around physically. She's just playing now, like an overgrown puppy that doesn't know its own strength, but I can envision scenarios a few years down the road when she might not be. I guess my first step ought to be cutting her off as soon as she starts to play rough, and if that doesn't work, I'll have to think of some sort of consequence. This is certainly not an issue I expected to have when I gave birth to a little girl--though at 10 pounds, even newborn G probably could have played in the defensive line on a baby football team.
Friday, January 07, 2011
The year of many changes
In thinking about 2011, I've realized that it's going to be packed full of milestones:
So, anyway, I thought it might be nice to pick one new thing each month and do it, so I'd have 12 different answers to that question when the end of this year rolls around. I'm having a little trouble getting started because I can't do anything unless I take G with me, and so far she hasn't been into any of my ideas. (I thought the Moroccan restaurant with belly dancers sounded fun. Sheeesh.) But I'm determined, and sooner or later I'll come up with an activity that interests both of us. Stay tuned for updates.
- This month, G turns 12, beginning her final official year of childhood--not that she'll suddenly be grown up when she turns 13, but a teenager is not a kid in the same way a 6- or 8- or 10-year-old is a kid. (A 12-year-old isn't really either, but you've got to draw the line somewhere.) This is her last year of day camp, afterschool care, children's tickets at the movies, and all sorts of other things that have been fixtures in our lives for a long time.
- Speaking of which, in June, G leaves the elementary school she's attended since her first day of kindergarten.
- Hard on the heels of that milestone, in early July, is the fifth anniversary of P's death, and then a few days later, what would have been our 15th wedding anniversary.
- In September, G starts junior high, which I expect to usher in all sorts of lifestyle changes for both of us.
- In November, I turn 40. The idea doesn't bother me as much as you might think, because the alternative to getting older is being dead, and I'm not up for that. But no matter how you look at it, it's a huge milestone. Maybe even a monolith.
So, anyway, I thought it might be nice to pick one new thing each month and do it, so I'd have 12 different answers to that question when the end of this year rolls around. I'm having a little trouble getting started because I can't do anything unless I take G with me, and so far she hasn't been into any of my ideas. (I thought the Moroccan restaurant with belly dancers sounded fun. Sheeesh.) But I'm determined, and sooner or later I'll come up with an activity that interests both of us. Stay tuned for updates.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Optimism
G: Am I going to get a car when I turn 16?
Me: If you save up some money, I'll put in the extra to help you buy a nice used car.
G: Can it be a Ferrari 458 Italia?
At least she dreams big!
Me: If you save up some money, I'll put in the extra to help you buy a nice used car.
G: Can it be a Ferrari 458 Italia?
At least she dreams big!
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Dear Rain
Normally you are my favorite sort of weather. When I wake up to a sky full of black, lowering clouds, my heart sings, and I feel energized and happy. I enjoy going for walks when you're gently drizzling, and I love lying in bed at night and listening to you drum on the roof.
This time, though, we have a problem. This time you've been going on for four days straight, and you are causing the windows and skylights in my house to leak. As a result, I now have an 11-year-old roommate who can't spend the night in her own room because gross, dirty water is dripping from the wall behind her bed. I love the 11-year-old dearly, but she's 5'5" and sleeps diagonally, which means there's no space for me on my own mattress. Plus, I like total darkness and silence to sleep, whereas she gets nervous without light and noise. (In this, she takes after her father, whom I also loved dearly, but whose insistence on leaving ESPN Sports Center playing all night long drove me bonkers.)
In short, I want my bedroom back, and also all the pans and Tupperware containers and towels I'm currently using to catch and/or soak up the drips. So please stop raining, just for a while, and let us dry out. Thanks.
This time, though, we have a problem. This time you've been going on for four days straight, and you are causing the windows and skylights in my house to leak. As a result, I now have an 11-year-old roommate who can't spend the night in her own room because gross, dirty water is dripping from the wall behind her bed. I love the 11-year-old dearly, but she's 5'5" and sleeps diagonally, which means there's no space for me on my own mattress. Plus, I like total darkness and silence to sleep, whereas she gets nervous without light and noise. (In this, she takes after her father, whom I also loved dearly, but whose insistence on leaving ESPN Sports Center playing all night long drove me bonkers.)
In short, I want my bedroom back, and also all the pans and Tupperware containers and towels I'm currently using to catch and/or soak up the drips. So please stop raining, just for a while, and let us dry out. Thanks.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Holiday music and magic
Today was the annual holiday music performance at G's school. They split it up this year so the upper grades performed first thing in the morning and primary performed just before lunch, and also flipped the order around so sixth-graders were first on the program. It really reduced the crowding in the auditorium, and also prevented the "disappearing audience" phenomenon I've witnessed at other performances: when younger kids are performing, the whole Mom-Dad-Grandma-Grandpa-Auntie-Uncle-baby-cousins family shows up, whereas older kids are lucky if they get one parent. These big packs of people watch their children perform and then get up and leave, so the last group in the rotation ends up playing to a nearly empty room. That didn't happen this time, and I was glad.
Because G is in band (she plays flute), she was part of the show from beginning to end: she sang with her grade, played with the rest of the band between each grade's performance, and also had a duet with her friend A, who plays the piano. They did Bert the Sweep's song from Mary Poppins, and it went quite well, I thought--not to mention that it was a huge deal for G, who has a very pretty singing voice but doesn't like being the center of attention, to grab a microphone and perform on her own in front of 200 people.
Watching her up there, all tall and confident and grown-up looking, I couldn't help thinking of her kindergarten and first-grade holiday shows, when P was still alive, and we couldn't quite believe we were the parents of a schoolkid. It doesn't seem like that long ago, but G herself reminded me just how far she's come since then. When I picked her up this evening, I asked her how the second show was (she played with the band at that one too), and she gushed, "Mom, the little kids were SO CUTE! They're just so little and young!" Yes, my big girl, they are.
Because G is in band (she plays flute), she was part of the show from beginning to end: she sang with her grade, played with the rest of the band between each grade's performance, and also had a duet with her friend A, who plays the piano. They did Bert the Sweep's song from Mary Poppins, and it went quite well, I thought--not to mention that it was a huge deal for G, who has a very pretty singing voice but doesn't like being the center of attention, to grab a microphone and perform on her own in front of 200 people.
Watching her up there, all tall and confident and grown-up looking, I couldn't help thinking of her kindergarten and first-grade holiday shows, when P was still alive, and we couldn't quite believe we were the parents of a schoolkid. It doesn't seem like that long ago, but G herself reminded me just how far she's come since then. When I picked her up this evening, I asked her how the second show was (she played with the band at that one too), and she gushed, "Mom, the little kids were SO CUTE! They're just so little and young!" Yes, my big girl, they are.
La mauvaise influence
G and I amuse ourselves with Google Translate:
Your face looks like a monkey's butt
Votre visage ressemble les fesses d'un singe.
A monkey put a banana in my ear.
Un singe a mis une banane dans mon oreille.
I said, "At least I'm smarter than a monkey."
J'ai dit: "Au moins, je suis plus intelligent qu'un singe."
The monkey cried.
Le singe pleuré.
And then flung poo.
Et puis merde jeté.
After we finished giggling over this, G said meditatively, "I think I'll take French in high school." I should probably warn her that high-school French involves lots of useful phrases, like "My aunt's house is yellow" and "Stephanie and Laurent are going to the disco," and little to no mention of butts or poo.
Your face looks like a monkey's butt
Votre visage ressemble les fesses d'un singe.
A monkey put a banana in my ear.
Un singe a mis une banane dans mon oreille.
I said, "At least I'm smarter than a monkey."
J'ai dit: "Au moins, je suis plus intelligent qu'un singe."
The monkey cried.
Le singe pleuré.
And then flung poo.
Et puis merde jeté.
After we finished giggling over this, G said meditatively, "I think I'll take French in high school." I should probably warn her that high-school French involves lots of useful phrases, like "My aunt's house is yellow" and "Stephanie and Laurent are going to the disco," and little to no mention of butts or poo.
Friday, December 10, 2010
Sign of the times
I need to mail a payment on my way to work tomorrow, and as I was addressing the envelope this evening, I had to stop and think hard about which corner the stamp was supposed to go in. I've been paying everything online for so long that I barely use the postal service anymore, and I'd forgotten.
It occurred to me then that I belong to the last generation of people who will remember getting that big stack of bills ready to mail out each month--G knows "paying bills" as something you do on the laptop, not at the kitchen table with a lot of envelopes and a checkbook. Similarly, going inside the bank is an unusual event for her: where I often went with my dad to deposit his paycheck and get cash for the weekend (if I was lucky, we'd use the drive-through teller, and I could watch the vacuum tube get sucked down and then shoot back up with money and a lollipop inside), she only knows that money somehow invisibly goes into my account and comes out again via debit card and computer, just as invisibly.
I'd never trade the convenience of the electronic method for the old hassles of waiting in line at banks and post offices, but it makes me feel a little like a time traveler to remember a world that doesn't exist anymore. I suppose it must happen to everyone sooner or later, at least in the modern world--if you lived before the Industrial Revolution, and certainly before the Renaissance, day-to-day existence didn't change much in the span of centuries, much less one lifetime. No wonder we're all so neurotic.
It occurred to me then that I belong to the last generation of people who will remember getting that big stack of bills ready to mail out each month--G knows "paying bills" as something you do on the laptop, not at the kitchen table with a lot of envelopes and a checkbook. Similarly, going inside the bank is an unusual event for her: where I often went with my dad to deposit his paycheck and get cash for the weekend (if I was lucky, we'd use the drive-through teller, and I could watch the vacuum tube get sucked down and then shoot back up with money and a lollipop inside), she only knows that money somehow invisibly goes into my account and comes out again via debit card and computer, just as invisibly.
I'd never trade the convenience of the electronic method for the old hassles of waiting in line at banks and post offices, but it makes me feel a little like a time traveler to remember a world that doesn't exist anymore. I suppose it must happen to everyone sooner or later, at least in the modern world--if you lived before the Industrial Revolution, and certainly before the Renaissance, day-to-day existence didn't change much in the span of centuries, much less one lifetime. No wonder we're all so neurotic.
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Disconnected
On Monday, the cable went out at our house and took our broadband with it. This was annoying for me, since without Internet access I can't read blogs, waste hours watching old commercials from my childhood on YouTube, or enjoy Photoshopped images of Michael Bublé and a velociraptor. But for G, being Internet-less for the evening was a tragedy so epic that Euripides might have hesitated to tackle it. She didn't want to draw, or read a book, or write a story, or play video games, or watch a movie, or dangle toys for the cats, or do any of the myriad other activities that she normally enjoys--she wanted to be online, damn it, and nothing else would do. We got home at 5:30, she finished her homework by 6:30, and then we had this conversation over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over:
She: Is it working now?
Me: Not yet.
I hadn't slept well the night before, and by eight o'clock I was so tired my head was spinning, so I went upstairs to lie down for a while. It would have been great, except that G followed me and spent the next 45 minutes hovering over my semi-conscious body and asking "Is the cable working now? Is it working now? What about now? Can you check and see?" until I finally sat up and said "Look, kid, humans survived for 100,000 years before the Internet was invented. I think you can make it for one night. GO FIND SOMETHING ELSE TO DO."
"This is torture," she groaned, and moped off to her room, where she sat--surrounded by TV, DVD player, Wii, Nintendo DS, flip video camera, books, movies, art supplies, and various other amusements--and was grumpy until bedtime. I was strongly tempted to get out our copy of The Phantom Tollbooth and make her read the first chapter, where Milo has everything in the world and is still bored.
(Actually, if someone had delivered a phantom tollbooth to our house right then, I probably would have paid the toll and waved her on her way. She could have come back when she'd learned her lesson, or when the cable was fixed, whichever came first.)
Anyway, the next day we had Internet access again and all was right with the world. I'm starting to wonder, though, whether I ought to restrict her computer time more if she's that obsessed with it. I've never actually seen a crack addict in search of a fix, but if I had, I'll bet it would have looked a lot like G did when she was stranded at the side of the information superhighway.
She: Is it working now?
Me: Not yet.
I hadn't slept well the night before, and by eight o'clock I was so tired my head was spinning, so I went upstairs to lie down for a while. It would have been great, except that G followed me and spent the next 45 minutes hovering over my semi-conscious body and asking "Is the cable working now? Is it working now? What about now? Can you check and see?" until I finally sat up and said "Look, kid, humans survived for 100,000 years before the Internet was invented. I think you can make it for one night. GO FIND SOMETHING ELSE TO DO."
"This is torture," she groaned, and moped off to her room, where she sat--surrounded by TV, DVD player, Wii, Nintendo DS, flip video camera, books, movies, art supplies, and various other amusements--and was grumpy until bedtime. I was strongly tempted to get out our copy of The Phantom Tollbooth and make her read the first chapter, where Milo has everything in the world and is still bored.
(Actually, if someone had delivered a phantom tollbooth to our house right then, I probably would have paid the toll and waved her on her way. She could have come back when she'd learned her lesson, or when the cable was fixed, whichever came first.)
Anyway, the next day we had Internet access again and all was right with the world. I'm starting to wonder, though, whether I ought to restrict her computer time more if she's that obsessed with it. I've never actually seen a crack addict in search of a fix, but if I had, I'll bet it would have looked a lot like G did when she was stranded at the side of the information superhighway.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Time in a bottle
I used to be a pretty low-maintenance person. I wore makeup and shaved the parts that needed it and all that, but my morning and evening routines were simple and centered on face-washing and teeth-brushing.
Now, with 40 right around the corner, things are getting more complex.
- Before I walk out the door in the morning, I take my B complex vitamin for stress, my calcium +D for staving off osteoporosis, and my beta blocker for palpitations. I coat my face and neck with Age Shield SPF 55 sunscreen--it's too late to do anything about the sun spot that's already popped up on my right cheek, but I'm not getting any more if I can help it--and I smooth down my poor dry, flyaway hair with shine spray.
- Then before I go to bed at night, I wash with enzyme cleanser, coat my face and neck again with "Revitalift" night cream, use the Water Pik to hold the constantly lurking gum disease at bay, and attack my disgusting crusty heels with a grater. Once a week, I also exfoliate my face with sugar scrub, because no amount of cream seems to completely stop my skin from slowly drying up and flaking away.
- Not to mention that every three weeks, I buy yet another box of hair dye and cover up the grey that has taken over about 50 percent of my head.
And this is all just the basic maintenance work it takes to keep me from falling down dead, breaking my bones, losing all my teeth, or turning into someone who looks like she lures little children to her house of sweets and bakes them in her oven. It doesn't include anything extra I might want to do like painting my nails or putting on lipstick or doing something different with my hair. At this rate, in 25 years I'll only be able to leave the house for an hour a day, because I'll need the rest of the time to tend to my deteriorating body.
Now, with 40 right around the corner, things are getting more complex.
- Before I walk out the door in the morning, I take my B complex vitamin for stress, my calcium +D for staving off osteoporosis, and my beta blocker for palpitations. I coat my face and neck with Age Shield SPF 55 sunscreen--it's too late to do anything about the sun spot that's already popped up on my right cheek, but I'm not getting any more if I can help it--and I smooth down my poor dry, flyaway hair with shine spray.
- Then before I go to bed at night, I wash with enzyme cleanser, coat my face and neck again with "Revitalift" night cream, use the Water Pik to hold the constantly lurking gum disease at bay, and attack my disgusting crusty heels with a grater. Once a week, I also exfoliate my face with sugar scrub, because no amount of cream seems to completely stop my skin from slowly drying up and flaking away.
- Not to mention that every three weeks, I buy yet another box of hair dye and cover up the grey that has taken over about 50 percent of my head.
And this is all just the basic maintenance work it takes to keep me from falling down dead, breaking my bones, losing all my teeth, or turning into someone who looks like she lures little children to her house of sweets and bakes them in her oven. It doesn't include anything extra I might want to do like painting my nails or putting on lipstick or doing something different with my hair. At this rate, in 25 years I'll only be able to leave the house for an hour a day, because I'll need the rest of the time to tend to my deteriorating body.
I love the Internet
Clearly the work of people with too much time on their hands, but still damn funny:
Michael Bublé Being Stalked by a Velociraptor
The best ones are where the velociraptor isn't immediately obvious, or where you can only see its shadow or its reflection or a tiny part of it.
But this one is my absolute favorite. (I've stood on that exact street corner, BTW. I wasn't stalking Michael Bublé, though; I was taking a photo of P under the Late Night marquee.)
Michael Bublé Being Stalked by a Velociraptor
The best ones are where the velociraptor isn't immediately obvious, or where you can only see its shadow or its reflection or a tiny part of it.
But this one is my absolute favorite. (I've stood on that exact street corner, BTW. I wasn't stalking Michael Bublé, though; I was taking a photo of P under the Late Night marquee.)
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