Category Archive

A little over a month ago I purchased a bathing suit for the first time in years–a real, whole bathing suit, not just a tankini top here and a tankini top there from random department store sales that I would wear with shorts because I refused to let anyone see my ass. This was an actual suit, a two-piece tankini set with an attached sarong on the bottom half and a wild summer flower print in funky colors. I was excited, but also a little nervous. For one thing, although the sarong provided a nice visual block, for all intents and purposes people were going to have the opportunity to see my butt in a bathing suit. I had mostly talked myself out of caring about this, because in spite of that little round post-baby tummy that will probably never go away, and in spite of the long list of body issues I’ve been carrying around with me for years (tiny boobs, enormous feet, round bottom), I really don’t have room to complain about my body. Even better, I am finally in a semi-happy place about my body. I wear single digit sizes, I am comfortable in my pre-pregnancy clothes, and I fully believe that when I am ready when I have the time some sweet day I will start exercising regularly again and rediscover my rockin’ muscles. So yeah, putting on an actual bathing suit bottom made me spend a few extra minutes in front of the mirror scrutinizing my parts. But I was far more nervous about another issue.

We (assuming there are no men reading this, and if you are a man–Hi Mike!–you might just want to stop now and walk away, and if you choose not to walk away, don’t say I didn’t warn you) are all familiar with the required grooming that accompanies bathing suit season. Do we shave? Do we wax? Or do we wear shorts over our suit bottoms and forget the whole grooming process altogether? Alas, that’s what I’ve been doing for years, but my bathing suit investment (and I’m using that word literally–have you purchased a bathing suit lately?!) was going to require a change in procedure.

The week before I was planning to debut The Suit at my family reunion on Memorial Day weekend at Lake Hartwell in South Carolina, I decided I’d spring for a wax job. When was a senior in college I worked the front desk of a salon, and I very quickly became the willing salon experiment. If things were slow, one stylist or another, or sometimes a group of them, would suggest that I have something cut, colored, or waxed. It was free and fun, and it taught me three things: 1) hair always grows back; 2) having a different hair color every month is a blast; and 3) although I cannot tolerate wax on my face, my legs and other bodily regions don’t even register the tug. So on the Wednesday before Memorial Day, I left my salon with a pristine bikini line. Great, except that by the weekend I was already touching things up with the tweezers. I’m sorry, but if I’m going to spend that much money to have someone rip my pubes out of my skin, I want them to stay gone longer than three days.

A few weeks later I bought a membership at a local water park so I could take my daughter to the super-cool kiddie pools, and before our first visit I was faced with the grooming problem again. I resorted to shaving, and that is fine in the moment, but we all know the agony of the day after. And that is why I decided to try some nifty bikini line hair remover cream for my four days at the beach.

We arrived at the beach on Tuesday evening, and after the car was unloaded and everything was in its place, I took my little tube of cream and locked myself in the bathroom. I read the directions carefully, noting the bold print (DO NOT LEAVE THIS CREAM ON FOR LONGER THAN 10 MINUTES!), and got to work. I was well into the process, with one side completely finished and the other side still on the clock with about four minutes remaining, when the fire alarm at the resort started screaming and a voice came into our room from a speaker over the door: “An emergency has been reported. Please exit your room through the nearest stairwell and leave the building. Do not use the elevator. Repeat….” Having experienced an actual devastating fire at my place of employment, I wasted no time in hastily removing the remaining cream, pulling on my shorts, gathering up the crew, and jetting down the stairs. Forty-five minutes later we received the green light to re-enter the building.

And 45 minutes later I went back to my hair removal experiment, only to discover with horror and, I must confess, mild fascination, I had not gotten rid of all of the cream in my haste to get out of the building. And apparently while I was milling around outside, the remaining cream sort of…spread. And that is why, when I swiped my bikini line with a wet washcloth, I was left with a bald spot the size of my fist in an area where there should be no bald spots.

And in case you are thinking of trying something similar for your summer grooming needs, you should know that although the hair removal cream worked REALLY, REALLY WELL–TOO well, you might say–I have already had to tweeze and shave just to maintain the effect. Which is why I’m just going to have to suffer the razor for the rest of the summer, or next thing you know I’ll be telling you another story like this one, and I’d prefer to never mention my bikini area on the internet again.

I began the morning with my usual shower-time meditation about what I expected to accomplish today (read: I talked to myself in the shower a la William Faulkner, rambling and without end or punctuation or even a real point, just talking and talking, to and about myself while the water runs all around, and ideas and tasks and concerns run like the water, and the noise of my thoughts mingle above the noise of the fan, and–wait, what was I saying?). Writing is always on this virtual list, which is either a good sign that I am moving toward this whole writing life thing, or that I am only inspired to write when it is inconvenient to do so (I also think a great deal about writing when I’m behind the wheel). In my typical stream-of-consciousness shower thinking, I pondered what I might write about in the course of the day, but I kept getting distracted by my dry, scaly, sandpapery hands. Seriously, I actually scratched myself on the face with my fingertips. By the time the shower was over I had not gotten very far in my thoughts about writing. It is really hard to think about writing when your brain is consumed by a single thought. No surprise, then, that on my way to work when I started thinking about writing again, I decided to write about dry skin. I know. Brilliant! I hope you are not disappointed, then, to learn that I got busy and distracted and never got around to writing about dry skin and now do not feel very tied to the subject at all. But like most inspiration, the dry skin situation opened up an even greater, deeper well of material. Here’s what happened:

I was chatting with a friend over coffee before school started, and for almost 30 minutes we talked and unconsciously picked at our respective dry hands until she finally asked if I had lotion. “Yes!” I replied, quite enthusiastically, because I have a bottle of scrumptious grapefruit lotion that is not only soothing and moisturizing but also makes people perceive you as much younger than you actually are. I opened my drawer and reached for it, but it was not there. I opened other drawers, moved things around, looked on my desk and computer station, even opened my bag to see if I had dropped it in there by mistake. No lotion. So I reached for the spot on my desk where I keep a pump bottle of lotion for kids to use, but mid-reach I realized that it too was gone.

I would be willing to bet that everyone who reads this has been a victim of office theft. It’s happened to me, and everyone I work with. Most of what disappears from our classroom desks, however, is food-, money-, or battery-related. I’ve had all of the above removed from desk drawers, and yet, even as I type this, all of the above is in my desk: three 2A batteries, 75 cents, a Nestle Crunch bar, some random 100 calorie snacks, and a calculator (with a 3A battery inside). These are the things kids steal, and yet, all I’m missing is two bottles of lotion. When I sat down at my desk this morning I noticed that my computer monitor was askew and my pencil cup had been overturned, and later I discovered a picture and my stapler out of place. But after the discovery of the missing lotion, I started finding, well, lotion. Little drops of grapefruit-scented lotion. It was on my jump drive. It was on my CPU next to a USB port. It was on a CD next to the monitor. It was on the mouse and the tape dispenser. Then I found my lip gloss, which is usually inside my desk, lying behind my computer.  I threw it away immediately, but maybe I should have dusted it for prints. It’s like a little crime scene, only it smells nice and there is no blood. Yet.

Because my poor, cracking dry hands? They are drier now than ever, the driest hands there ever were, and all because someone–can I type this with a straight face?–crept into the school library on a holiday weekend, went through my desk in search of cosmetic products, ignored food and money (not to mention thousands of dollars in electronics and computers! Hello! It’s not called the MEDIA CENTER for nothing!), and stole my lotion.

I was watching the tape that’s been in the video camera since Christmas day, and there’s a scene from my hospital room the day Mia was born that nearly makes me wet myself every time think about it. In the background music is playing–specifically, Joan Baez’s Dark Chords on a Big Guitar. There is a song on this album called “Wings,” which was written by another of my favorite artists, Josh Ritter. My sister Megan likes him as well, and when the song came on I said aloud to Megan, “That’s a Josh Ritter song.” This is the conversation that followed:

My Grandmother: He performed at the Civic Center a while back, and I was going to go but I didn’t, and then we found out the next week that he had died in that plane crash.

Me: Who?

G: John Denver.

Me: I said Josh Ritter.

My sister Charity: John Denver’s dead?

At this juncture my father tells a joke about John Denver’s driving skills that he heard on the John Boy and Billy Show. To my knowledge, Megan never actually heard a word I said. Country roads indeed.

Why is it that in every news photo published of her, Condi Rice looks like she’s standing knee-deep in the middle of a giant vat of cow shit?

Why is it that every third person asks how you’re doing when you’re pregnant? These people never spoke to me before. Why now?

For those of you who have recently had kids, did you have a baby registry? If so, did people use it? I’m being “showered” this weekend, and only one item has been purchased from the registry (by my aunt, no less). What’s up with that?

Why is it that some people insist on driving for as long as they can in a known turn lane during rush hour, even though they really don’t want to turn, only to put their signal on in the middle of an intersection and then count on someone’s goodwill (or sheer irritation) to let them in the straight lane? More to the point, why are these people allowed to drive at all? Don’t they know they are a) holding up the turn lane traffic and b) posing an accident threat by parking their stupid asses in the middle of the intersection while waiting to squeeze into the traffic they should have been sitting in all along?

And why is it that in every published photo of Rosie O’Donnell, Rosie looks like she’s in heavy labor, about to give birth to something really large, like Star Jones?

…if Pluto is no longer a planet, what will become of that little mnemonic device we learned in school (hi Joy!) to help us remember the order of the planets? You know–My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas. What now?

My Very Energetic Mother Just Served Us…Nothing?

Those of you ahead of me in the motherhood journey will no doubt assure me that sleeping discomfort at almost 17 weeks is nothing compared to the discomfort I will encounter at 37, or even 27 weeks. Fine, whatever, I believe you. But–and I’m NOT complaining, just making an observation–the hours between 11 p.m. and 8 a.m. are not my best time of day. Oh, who am I kidding? More like the hours between 11 and 4, because there’s not much sleep taking place once that magic hour arrives. Why, you ask? Beats me. It’s not like I’m battling a giant belly, just a small bump, and the multiple trips to the bathroom were commonplace before. I just can’t get comfortable, and when I do sleep, I wake up suddenly between 4 and 5. I never slept on my back before, but now I can imagine no more comfortable position than that, and we all know that’s a no-no. I always slept on my side before, but mainly my right side, and I read recently that even that is a health risk for the baby. My doctor told me I could sleep on my stomach if I used lots of pillows, but that’s never been comfortable to me, and it has to be said that my ever-growing bazooms make it even less comfy now. More on that later. That leaves the left side. In yoga practice we are told that lying on the left side puts unnecessary pressure on the heart. In pregnancy we are told that lying on the back and right side does the same. If I lie on my stomach I have dreams of squashing my unborn child. Seriously, what’s left? Headstand?

And speaking of dreams, while pregnancy makes a large number of your brain cells inoperable during waking hours*, it certainly fills your head with interesting things during those few precious hours of fretful sleep. For example, I had a dream about the baby a few weeks ago. I think it was a boy, but I never got to find out, because it very quickly turned into a kitten. And last night my dreams were filled with cereal. Breakfast cereal. In my closet. Specifically, Cap’n Crunch Red Berries, Lucky Charms, Cocoa Krispies and Rice Krispies. I found them all there, stuffed down into one huge box, and began eating them dry by the handful. Perhaps I was hungry during the night? Note to self: eat a snack before bed.

I know I promised you tales of carpet installation and the crazy adventure my mom and I had at the beach, but in just a little while I’m heading back to the beach for what will certainly be another crazy adventure, this time with my mom AND my sisters. In the meantime, I’m taking a notebook so I won’t forget all the things I want to write about when I return. Here’s a preview:

• boobs
• my teenager theory
• my mom’s man theory
• my job situation

Wishing you all beach thoughts and endless pitchers of margaritas (hey, somebody should enjoy the wonder that is tequila!).

*Gayle asked me last week after a particularly inane statement had escaped my lips, “Is the baby pressing on your brain?”

…person who can’t stop singing “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” the (gulp!) Oscar-winning song from “Hustle and Flow.” I didn’t watch enough of the Oscars to deliver a thorough commentary of last night’s festivities (my 2 cents: Reese Witherspoon is adorable, George Clooney rocks, Jon Stewart cracks me up, and “Crash” really IS the best movie in my opinion) but I did manage to tune in just in time for Three 6 Mafia’s performance of “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.” Lucky me. I was more than a little annoyed with the win (yeah, I was biased–I’ve been a Dolly Parton fan since before I could form sentences), and extremely annoyed with the gangsta reaction from the awardees (sue me–I teach high school where I’m showered with gangsta every minute of the day). But most annoying is that the song seems permanently trapped in my subconscious, and since I only know one line (don’t make me type it again–isn’t it obvious?), that line is playing over and over inside my head. I don’t really have a problem with all rap music, but I’ve been listening to “Out There Live,” Dar Williams’s brilliant on-the-road collection of some of her best music, and I had a good “Iowa”/”The Ocean”/”What Do You Hear in These Sounds?” thing going, and now it’s been blasted out by what MSNBC calls an integral part of the film, which is based on the “Memphis crunk subculture, and how fame can be achieved through parlaying mix tapes.” I’m sorry to say that any possibility of my actually seeing “Hustle and Flow” has now been completely eliminated by the word “crunk,” which makes me want to chew pencil lead while walking on fire ant condos.

…this is for Trista.

This just in: Pop star Michael Jackson was spotted shopping in a Bahrain mall on Wednesday, hiding his face behind a veil and donning a black robe traditionally worn by women in the Gulf.

He also had his kids veiled and robed, and a friend at work told me he was recently discovered in a women’s bathroom. He said he was “confused.” Never has a truer understatement been uttered.

***

I’ve officially declared myself “sick,” and today I have cramps, so this is all I have. I’ll try to say and/or do something intelligent tomorrow.

I’m starting at the end and working my way back to this morning. If you’re squeamish, even just a little, don’t read #5.

1. Thank God “Commander in Chief” just rescued me from American Idol auditions. Damn. I’m embarrassed for some of those people. Did you see that girl who wanted to kick Paula Abdul’s ass? And I’m pretty sure Moaning Myrtle from the Harry Potter movies auditioned. And didn’t you love the little boy who got all up in the camera to defend his brother. He was all “Oh no you DIN’T tell my brother he can’t sing!” Now that thar was some Class A entertainment, or, as Gold Bikini Girl might say, “Yo, you bitches gon’ be sorry you didn’t watch, yo!”

2. Oh, did I mention? Those American Idol auditions, the ones that were on tonight? That’s where I live. Hoooo dawgies.

3. I locked the cat in my closet for an hour. I might have done it [subconsciously] on purpose, because he’s been quite naughty tonight. He’s been knocking things off of flat surfaces (like full glasses of water) and biting Suzanna for no reason. I’m fairly certain he has a smirk on his face. But I didn’t actually KNOW he was in the closet because he was inside his shopping bag. That’s right, I keep a paper shopping bag in the closet for him; as soon has he hears the door open he flies down the hall and jumps inside the bag. It was only when I saw his paw snaking around under the closed door that I realized my error. Now he’s being even more of a brat. Guess I have to pay for my inconsiderate behavior.

4. I’m pretty sure I’m getting a cold. I’m achy and my nose is stuffy. My throat hurts. I’ve been telling myself all day that I’m just tired because a) it was the first day of a new semester and I got a new batch of students, so I did a LOT of talking today, b) I didn’t sleep well last night, and c) the really horrible thing that happened at school today, which I’ll tell you about shortly, really sucked the life right out of me. I’ll let you be the judge.

5. This morning when I got to work–an entire hour early!–I went into the classroom next door to mine to visit with my neighbor. As soon as I saw her I knew something was terribly wrong. She asked me if I’d come in the front door. No, I said. I parked out back like I always do. She asked me if I’d heard about what was in front of the school. I was starting to get nervous. You probably are too, and you should be. If ever there was a question about whether or not I needed to find a new job, it flew right out the window this morning.

It seems that during the night, some sicko killed and mutilated a fawn on the front steps of our school building, and then smeared its blood all over the front doors. According to my colleague (I declined a visit to the front of the building so I thankfully didn’t actually see any of this, although the images in my head are awful and frightening) there were bloody handprints all over the concrete around the doors and on the doors themselves. I don’t know about you, but if I were the principal I might have seriously considered sending my kids home. Instead, my principal–you remember Principal–ordered that “the mess” be cleaned up immediately and declared that she was not reporting the incident because “it’s just someone doing something mean, it’s not a crime.” Whaaaa?

According to my neighbor, several people were in tears and one of our colleagues, a woman whose children attend the school, freaked out and told Principal that if she didn’t report it she would go to the school board, the papers, the local news. Good thing the officer arrived before “the mess” was literally and figuratively swept under the rug. He assured Principal he’d be filing an investigation because a) it’s not deer season so the act was a violation of hunting law, and even more seriously, b) violent acts lead to more violent acts.

That’s the last anyone heard, because nothing more was said about the incident today. No email, no “FYI,” nothing. It’s a sad day for education when the reputation and public opinion of your school outweigh the safety of the students who attend the school, and that’s essentially what happened today, and what’s been happening all year. Let’s not report that fight. Let’s not suspend those students; I’m sure an anger management class will do the trick. Let’s ignore that gang display, the kids are just messing around. Look at our school on paper and you’ll think it’s a great place–low dropout rate, decent test scores, very few suspensions and expulsions, almost no violence. But walk in the front door–well, I already told you about the front door.

Ask me if I’m looking for a new job.

Consider the following:

• Yesterday, before and after The Da Vinci Code, I washed two loads of laundry. I hate folding laundry, so I left the clothes in the laundry basket until this morning, when I dumped its contents on my bed, a self-imposed ploy to force myself to fold the clothes before I go to bed*.

• This morning Suzanna was acting strangely, like she was having trouble breathing and standing up. Although we later went on what seemed to be a completely normal walk, she IS almost 11, and she is my baby, and in typical “me” fashion I freaked out. So I left her in the house, and on my way to work I called Gayle and asked her to check on the dog sometime today, preferably around lunchtime. She said she would.

When I returned home this afternoon I found a frisky, completely normal Suzanna (perhaps she was pouting this morning because I made her get off the couch?) and THIS:

Please disregard the aforementioned pile of unfolded laundry and pay special attention to the BEAR dressed in my FAVORITE HOODIE and JEANS. It should go without saying that I almost wet myself from fear when I came around the corner and flipped on my bedroom light. I am surrounded by weirdos.

*Which I still have yet to do, and it’s bedtime. Dammit. If you know me at all you know those clothes are going right back in the laundry basket.

Did you ever have one of those really nutty history teachers in high school–the kind who got just a little too excited about the subject matter, the kind who showed up the first day of the Civil War unit dressed as Abe Lincoln and stood and talked like Abe Lincoln all day long, the kind who, in your senior year, dyed his dark brown hair blonde and started hanging out with a former student and wearing ripped jeans and chains? Ever have one of those?

Neither did I. My history teacher was a 50 year-old single lady who wore her hair in a bun, pinned a butterfly broach to her collar every day, lived with her mom, and looked exactly the same in 1992 as she had in 1958 when she graduated from the high school from which she eventually retired. But the man described above taught next door, and he was all of that and more. He was so exhilarated by United States history that he practically buzzed–twitched–with energy each time a bell sounded to begin class. Friends who had him said they never knew what he might do during a lecture: leap onto his desk and then hurl himself off again to depict those who leapt to their deaths the day the stock market crashed; run from the room and not return for several minutes; cry. Outside the classroom he was equally unpredictable. I knew him because I was a TA during his planning period, so I often ran into him in the office or the library, and he was always friendly, perhaps a little too much so. He never simply said “hello” to me; instead he bowed dramatically, spoke in a wacky accent, or shook my hand. Of course, he was this way with everyone. It wasn’t unusual for someone in my circle of friends to utter, “Mr. W. is insane. Do you think he’s on something?”

Turns out he was. CRACK! That’s right, crack. The history teacher was a crack addict. Hand on my heart, I am not making this up, not one single word. And do you know what the sad thing is? I didn’t even blink when I heard. I probably even said something along the lines of, “Oh. Well yeah, sure he is. It makes perfect sense.” Actually, the truly sad thing is that THE HISTORY TEACHER WAS A CRACK ADDICT, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more out there like him–poor souls who love what they teach but can’t deal with the bureaucracy and red tape that comes with the job, not to mention the “I really couldn’t give two shits” attitude so many students have these days. It’s a wonder we’re not all on crack! I for one will be looking at my colleagues in a whole new light tomorrow.

Except in this case the laughter is less like “haha, that’s hilarious,” and more like “haha, could you please step away, you are scaring me.”

There was a man in the next aisle at Target last night who was in line behind a woman he obviously knew. They chatted as he put his items for purchase on the counter, and I heard her say, “It looks like you’re stocking up tonight.” He replied, “Oh, well, the grandkids are coming this week.” That response might have made sense had he been purchasing, oh, I don’t know, juice boxes or string cheese or goldfish crackers, but this man was buying FOUR cans of Raid insect killer, THREE bottles of Lysol surface cleaner, and a deep fryer.

I ask you, is there something I don’t know about modern child care?

When I was spellchecking my gum story, I got a huge laugh out of the spellchecker’s suggested spellings for the words “freakin’” and “ballcap.” Thank goodness I was paying attention and didn’t click REPLACE. Otherwise I might have been sitting in “a foreskin wad of blue gum” while wearing a skirt instead of shorts and a “falsify.” No kidding. At least foreskin, like freakin’, actually starts with an “f.” I’m totally lost on the falsify/ballcap connection. Anyone?