Thursday, August 19, 2010

It's Not Always What You See

You don't know the all of me,
you only know what you can see. Sometimes, I am sweet, sincere, devout. Then other times I'm just inside-out.

Gruff and frustrated, simmering, too. Not sure to tell you off or give in to an angry screw.

The world is big and wide and full of doubt. You only see the me you want - heartfelt, subservient, with little thought...

It's not that I want to run away, just have you see the all of me, that elusive enigma that even I don't always see. And maybe one day, we'll all agree.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Not Tonight Honey, I'm On A Diet....

A recent poll published in USA Today cites that "for some women, weight control is more important than sex."  I had to read that sentence twice.  Honestly, I did....because I'm dying to ask those ladies, "Are ya' doin' it wrong?"

There are many things that I would give up if the Ab Genie granted my wish for a rock hard core, or if a plastic surgeon took me on as a charity case.....like lying about my age, cheating at Monopoly, rolling through stop signs, making my kids do silly dances for me before I will feed them, removing from my head the word "ruh-tard" when I see a mentally handicapped person, looting and pillaging my neighbor's collection of mail-order catalogs, hoarding and eating the kids Halloween and Easter candy.....but sex (for many different reasons).....would be no where on the list (despite my current knocked up condition).

Don't get me wrong, for as much as I love my husband, his penchant to grab my breasts in greeting, "just because he can" can actually be a turn off (side note: I mean, seriously, what is up with guys and boobs?  We were walking in Fisherman's Wharf in SF a month ago and a fat old guy walks past us wearing a T-shirt that said "I love boobies"....what up with that?!?).  So when I get really fed up, he whines that I can be a one woman sex excuse generating machine
  1. It's too hot. 
  2. It's too cold.
  3. I have to poop....and it can't wait.
  4. Odd days of the week are such a turn off.
  5. Ugh, you didn't change the channel & I'm so NOT watching Leno, good night.
  6. I just moisturized.
  7. I think one of the kids just puked, better go check.
  8. Poking me on facebook does not constitute foreplay.
  9. I'm just 146 pages away from finishing up "Pride & Prejudice" for the 18th time.
  10. You really shouldn't have had all those onions with dinner.
  11. Oops, I forgot to put the laundry in the dryer.
  12. I'm too worried about the economy and why Bill O'Reilly keeps picking on poor Jennifer Aniston?
  13. Ooh, "Castle" is on and you know how much I love that Nathan Fillion....
  14. This is a really hard Sudoku puzzle...I just want to finish it
  15. John Mayer has been tweeting like crazy today....I can't wait to see what he says next!
And the list goes on.....I'm sure you all have other good ones to add to the list (please feel free to share!)....

According to eHow, "30 minutes of intercourse will burn 195 calories."  Isn't that a much better way to burn off that late afternoon grande mocha? So why take one option off the list that would actually help keep those rockin' abs a rockin'.  Granted, it's no Zumba class, but it actually can be fun, when you get out of your head and let it.  Besides,there's a reason the book is called "Skinny Bitch," there are more health benefits related to sex than starving yourself, such as better body image, feeling sexier, stress relief, ....did I mention STRESS RELIEF?

I bring up stress relief, because we are becoming an increasingly angrier and angrier nation.  Workplace shootings; pissed off flight attendants; Kelsey Grammar (who, btw, recently dumped the wife who convinced him she had something called "irritable bowel syndrome"...and made him go on TV and talk about it...damn, why couldn't I pull that one off!); all those greasy, sweaty, hairless, leather-like gorilla Jersey Shore guys "creepin'" all over the place; the incompetent New York State legislature; and more and more Kardashians coming out of the woodwork each day....we are awash in a perfect storm of a listless economy, general overall resentment,  tawdry voyeurism through 24-hour gossip sites (LUV U PEREZ!) and global warming.....so I must ask, is anybody out there (other than me) having any sex?

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

The Steven Slater Effect


Yesterday, at a local diner, I recieved the shock of my life.  As the middle aged waitress (not to be confused with the Bitchy Waiter, btw) brought out our food, I lightly touched her arm and asked, "Could you bring us a new bottle of ketchup?" The 6 yr. old, Crazy Man, was already eyeing the, for all intesive purposes, "empty" bottle on the table very dubiously.  I thought I would ask, in an effort to head off the volley of questions that would spew from Crazy Man's mouth. 

She turned on me with angry glazed-over eyes and announced, "Do I look like ya' mutha?  Do I look like I have the time to go all the way back to the kitchen, then come all the way back here with a new bottle of ketchup, FOR YOU?  Look, look around.....does it look like I'm not busy today?"

I did look around, and was embarrassed to see the majority of the restaurant staring at me. "No...it's okay, don't worry about it," I mumbled.  But she had already turned hard on here heels, loudly saying, "But here I go, getting you another mutha-fuckin' ketchup, like I'm the f-ing Heinz 57- St. Paulie girl...."

"Quick, before she comes back.....grab the bottle from the table over there....AND HIDE IT." I told my 9 yr. old, fearing that if she saw, we'd be pelted with small packages of orange marmalade or even worse, the germ-laced mints at the register. Then it hit me, in one angry, curse-laden mouthful, I had been Steven Slater-ed.

Like the pissed-off JetBlue flight attendant, who according to Jimmy Fallon, "grabbed two beers and jumped."  I believe I was the victim of a walk by, table side "Slater-ing" - one, in what I fear might be a rash of copy cat acts from employees in the service industry, most of whom are fed up with the general douche-yness of their customers and the lull of modern life.

Now granted the flight was coming in from Pittsburgh....need I say more, but I feel that Steven Slater could've behaved in a more professional manner.   Let's face it Steve, if you can't handle the luggage, then get off the plane.....which you did, after you smartly threw down your very large carry-on bag, which I'm told looked like it would NOT fit in any of the overhead bins.

Let's not canonize the guy for re-gurgitating the "take this job and shove it" mantra and turning it into a glittering broadway revue.....soon to star Hugh Jackman as a down-on-his-luck singing, dancing,disgruntled sequin-clad air steward. Because we all know that the fanny-ing about with the drink cart has its perks, including making thinly veiled passes at married men, trying to secretly seduce them by coyly slipping them an extra Dr. Pepper, or two.

And while air travel has become increasingly no frills - no pillows, blankets, food or leg room - the flight attendants are there to set a friendly tone and to gently remind passengers that we're all in this together, so let's make the best of it. Having recently flown from coast to coast in my "fragile" state, it was not only an uncomfortable experience, but an extremely eye-opening one.....NO ONE....I repeat NO ONE helped the very visibly pregnant woman hoist her bag into the overhead bin, then once again, hoist it back down at the end of the flight.  Of the 4 flights, (I connected each way), NOT ONE of my smelly, agitated fellow passengers, or any of the "friendly" flight attendants so much as lifted a finger to help, or ask if any assistance was needed.  I realize that pregnancy is not a handicap, and women were long ago giving birth on the job in rice paddies and farm fields, but I thought modern manners would have garnered me a little help, and not comments like, "Oh my, you have to pee AGAIN, dear?"

I could have put any number of people in my pregnancy-fueled hormonal-cross hairs, but I didn't.  Propriety brought me back to my seat to do numerous sharp reps of kegel exercises.  As I counted and clentched, my anger subsided, though, sadly, the urge to pee did not. Now with every new news item about Steve Slater (or the now inevitable View appearance), working class hero, or t-shirt with Steve Slater in the likeness of Che Guevara,  or Facebook tribute page, I just want to scream!  Because if he had only "Queen-ed" up, done his own version of a kegel exercise and turned the other cheek, he could've been trolling for a sugar daddy on the next flight to Boca....like tomorrow!

Monday, August 2, 2010

Knocked-Up.....AGAIN!


I stared in disbelief at the three pee-soaked sticks on the bathroom vanity....two thin lines, then just a plus sign, then finally, the nail-in-the-cradle....a new-fangled digital LCD display that arrogantly flashed "YES!" ....As in "Yes, you stupid bitch, the rabbit died...YOU ARE PREGNANT!"

I fumbled for the test instructions, reading and then re-reading again in Spanish...then French....hoping some shred of information regarding false positives was lost in translation. But I quickly realized, that "You're fucked," pretty much means "You're fucked," in any language.

And on many levels I was....or had been...very vigorously (but not memorably) sometime around the beginning of February. Now it was April and I was pregnant. But before the reality crept in, before I told anyone, before I let my mind begin to ponder what color would we have to repaint the guest room....I began to oddly rationalize my way out of this situation, because hadn't my husband once famously announced "We have three....you're not having anymore, at least with ME anyway."

Afterall, maybe the pregnancy tests that I had purchased at the local CVS were wrong. Maybe all of the pregnancy tests in the state of Connecticut were wrong. Or maybe, I shouldn't have purchased that one with the lines at the Dollar Store. Or maybe I have some syndrome in which your body only THINKS its pregnant. Or maybe this is just the final episode of LOST.

It wasn't any of those and I started to mentally live out my own variation of the movie "Knocked Up"....but my husband is much cuter than Seth Rogan (though probably just as hairy), and we ARE married...doesn't that count for something....AND.....no one in the house had a raging case of pink eye.

We should have known that somewhere between my husband's horniness, an astonishing disregard for any kind of birth control, my fertile Irish peasant genes, and my cast-iron uterus (which has known to go by the moniker "Ole Reliable") we were playing with fire. And so we sat dumbfounded in the Obstetrician's office when he confirmed what I already knew and then flatly stated, "I thought you said at your last visit, you were done?" I didn't know what to say, because honestly, a year ago, I thought I was. It was my husband who spoke first, visibly peeved by the comment, "Yeah, well, that's what Brett Favre kept saying, but he still signed with the Vikings."

As we walked out of the office, I had a sinking feeling that I'd hear that comment alot. That the question of "I thought you said you were done?" would be dogging me until November. And really, how DO you respond to that? "Well....it sure beats a 9 to 5." Or, "It was either a baby or a dog....and we know my husband's not allergic to babies."

Slowly, I began to test the waters with my news....by telling total and complete strangers. People that I knew had no connection with any friends or family members. Random people that I knew, a Russian Reflexologist, an Asian yoga teacher, my Israeli therapist, the mentally handicapped bagger at the grocery store....all who had no idea who my husband was and had very thick accents....So there was little chance of any of them running in to him with a chorus of congratulations and VERY little chance of him understanding them if he did. Thus mitigating the "What the hell, why did YOU tell HER" arguments from my husband.

But as June rolled around, and maternity jeans loomed in my near future, we anxiously waited for the Amnio results before we told our kids about sibling number 4. But when we did, one night at dinner at a local diner, after the 6 yr. old's short stack of choclate chip pancakes arrived, their reactions were not what I had expected. Crazy Man, the 6 yr. old, was at first excited, then turned very serious and asked, "So, where is it going to sleep?" My third grader, who up until this moment was the quintessential middle child, was very worried, and looked at my husband and said, "You're kidding. This is a joke, right?" But the 11 yr. old rejoiced to hear the baby was going to be a boy, and her Queen Bee status would remain intact. "Well, I feel bad for those two.  You know, I'll get a lot of attention, because I'm a girl and the oldest....and the baby will get a lot of attention because he's the youngest....you guys are on your own." she said and pointed to her two brothers.....because yet again, in her middle school mind, good news, no matter whose it was, was always, in some way, about her.

To make matters worse, reactions didn't get any better when started to tell family members, each dumbfounded in their own way, all seemed to offer up different versions of "You've got to be joking!" or "Better you than me." However, the most unusual comment came from a neighbor who remarked, "Well, it's good to know that someone on the street is still having sex." I'm still trying to figure out if that last one was a backhanded compliment or just plain creepy.

Now it is August and only a few more months to go and we have finally reconciled ourselves to refer to "The Situation" as a pleasant surprise, and not a covert military op (i.e., shock and awe). But, I fear the little playful jabs will linger...at a BBQ this past weekend, a friend remarked, upon hearing of our recent trip to the West Coast, "Well, at least when the two of you are alone together between now and November, you can't possibly make #5."

Oh silly friend, where there's a will, there's a way.....and if not, there's always the fear of osmosis.