Boys Rule

I've been thinking about boys a lot lately.
Not on purpose or anything.
I'll just be going along, minding my own, doin' what needs be done, and  - whap!  - thoughts of boys pop into my head.

Let me give you some examples ...

On the evening of February 13th, I was seated at our kitchen table next to my daughter. We were working on the task of assembling her Valentines to bring to pre-school. She'd picked out some at Target - pictures of cartoon monkeys and little monkey tattoos for each kid in her class. As she folded the cards and I stuffed the envelopes, I got a better look at the tattoos.

Damn.

All the monkeys had flowers in their hair - tucked behind one ear a la Dorothy Lamour in The Road to Bali. There were no monkeys wearing trucker hats or motorcycle helmets. Whatever would the boys think?! Would the boys be upset at these girlie monkey tattoos? Would they reject them and throw them on the floor in a rage?

Then I thought What's the big deal? I'm sure my daughter will get a boatload of Valentines with dump trucks and robots on them, and she'll like them. So, why do I get all worked up about whether or not the boys will be okay with something with flowers on it?

Because girls will accept things that are more stereotypically male, while boys turn up their noses at girl stuff.

Girls will read a book with a male protagonist, while boys bristle at reading one with a female lead character. I know

I'm speaking in generalizations here, but there's research - and more than a decade's worth of my own observations as a middle school teacher - to back these generalizations up.

I do not like this.
It feels wrong.
It seems to say It's still is a man's world, and women (including me) are trained to adjust and adapt to it. 

And then last weekend, I was sorting through some of my daughter's toys - the ones she's outgrown and wants to "give to a baby". I was looking at some stacking rings, really nice ones made of wood, imported from France, painted with gorgeous bright colors and patterns.

Our friends' little boy is developmentally at the right stage to play with these, but then I noticed that two of the rings were pink. Hot pink, actually. And I found myself thinking Uh, oh! This might be too feminine for him. 

Am I completely nuts?
The boy isn't even a year old yet!
He doesn't know what pink is!
Hell, he doesn't know what a boy is!
And here I am, worried that his parents are going to accuse me emasculating their son by giving him something a little too "pretty" to play with.

I was starting to think it was just me.
Surely, other women don't think like this.

Then at work today I was showing two (female) colleagues this awesome website called the Girl Effect. The three of us watched the video and were immediately moved and impressed and could absolutely see how it fit in with our curriculum and talked about showing it in class. ..

And then each one of us.
Independently.
Came up with the same worry:
How will the boys react?


Wow.

So, I know it's not just me who keeps thinking about boys, which is comforting.
But why are we always so worried about keeping them happy?

Probably because we're a bunch of girls.

I'll Have What She's Having

I'll never be a runner.
This is a fact I know about myself.

I've always blamed my lack of compatibility with running on my bad ankles.
And my distaste for being too warm.
Oh, and the pain;
I don't much care for the pain.
All of which are pretty good reasons for not running, but, as I recently discovered, these are not the real reasons why I cannot run.

Running, it turns out, makes me talk dirty.
Loudly.
And that's just not the sort of thing I can be doing around the neighborhood - in front of impressionable children and small animals.

I discovered my dirty, dirty runner's mouth thanks to my winter workouts with the Wii. Feeling all amped up and immortal after my forays into expert mode virtual boxing and rhythm parade (What?! It's a sport! Kinda.), I decided to give running a virtual whirl.

And it didn't kill me.
And I liked that it didn't kill me.
So I did it again.
Eventually, I got so full of my virtual runner self that I clicked on the RUN (LONG) icon on the screen.

I maintained a good pace and kept up with my Mii guide through the trail.
About halfway through, I started to realize that this long run was - spoiler alert! - longer and more difficult than the short runs had been.

To keep myself motivated (because I'm far too stubborn to just quit), I started yelling.
To myself.
Cheering myself on, I guess.

As I neared the virtual finish line, I realized what I'd been saying and how, um, wrong it sounded -

Yes!
That's it!
Keep going!
Do it! Do it!
You're almost there!
Uh-huh!
Keep it up!
That's right!
Yesssss!

Oh, and the big sigh of relief at the end did not help matters much either.

I cannot take this show on the open road.
Whatever would the neighbors think?!
One minute I'd be running along the lakeshore, then the going would get tough, and I'd turn into Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally.

I like my neighborhood, and I don't want to have to move.

And that's why I'll never be a runner.
Really.

In My Corner

In my latest endeavor to lose the ten pounds that I've been trying to lose for the last nine years, I went out and got myself a Wii - and all the Wii Fit Plus accoutrements that go along with it.

I'm three weeks in, and 3.6 pounds have been lost.

On the right track, but I know I'll have to pick up the pace (and put down the bon bons) if I really want to see the remaining 7.4 pounds disappear.

Along with learning fascinating facts about my BMI and center of balance (I tend to favor my right side by about 2%.), the Wii Fit has taught me about what it takes to motivate me.

Apparently, it takes Burgess Meredith.

My most satisfying moments on the Wii are spent doing what is called "rhythm boxing". Not exactly an Olympic sport, but, somehow, swinging my Wiimote and nunchuk while stepping on and off the balance board in time is oddly gratifying.

Deep within my pacifist soul, I harbor a desire to throw the occasional punch. And rhythm boxing lets me do it in a socially-acceptable way. It even gives me gold stars when I've done it well, which is, I must say, all the damn time.

Seriously, I'm up to expert mode.

But enough about me.
Back to Burgess Meredith...

You see, I'm put through my daily rhythm boxing paces by the computer-generated approximation of the voice of a grizzled old trainer.

I'm his Rocky Balboa.
And he's my Mickey.

He pushes me to hit harder, calls me Fighter, and always ends the workout by telling me that I'd better hit the gym again tomorrow. Saying, "Nice block!" is as close as this guy gets to gushing.

And I'm totally working my ass off to win his approval.

Yes, I desperately want my virtual rhythm boxing trainer to be proud of me.

Is that odd?

Here's the thing, though. I don't really give a shit what the computerized lady with the perky breasts who leads me through yoga and strength training thinks of me.

When she tells me that how great my balance is, I get all, "Oh, don't patronize me," with her.

And when she gets so nurturing and concerned about me when I "... seem a little shaky" doing the tree pose, I just roll my eyes.

She's fake and soulless, and a bit like too many people I've actually met.

I read an article recently about how researchers figured out that you can't truly fake a smile. Not even to a baby. A smile is too complex, involving a perfectly timed coordination of movements at the corners of the mouth and the edges of the eyes.

Maybe praise is the same way. You can't just program a machine to say, "Good job!" and expect to affect me the way genuine praise from a genuine person can - even if you have programmed the machine to say it fifteen different ways.

So, I turn down the sound when the virtual lady with the hollow words comes on.

And I smile as I throw punches for my own Burgess Meredith, who respects me far too much to ever tell me how impressed with me he is.

Glitter

The middle-school girls I teach are doing something weird.
Or, more precisely, not doing something weird.
And that's what's so strange.

I've had a front row seat to the seventh grade for about fifteen years now, so I kinda know what to expect from the kids on many levels.

The boys this year have not let me down. They are folding paper footballs and making origami Freddy Krueger fingers with wild abandon. They truly believe they invented both these things. And they are right on schedule in doing so. Every group of boys before them has done the exact same thing - and believed that they, too, had invented something new and wondrous.

But the girls - that's a different story.

As I looked at my students today, I noticed that something was missing.
Something scores of tween girls have brought to my room every single year.
That something is gobs of inexpertly applied glitter eye make-up.

None of my girls are ridiculously sparkly this year.

In fact, I'd be hard pressed to find many of them with anything beyond a tasteful (?!) touch of mascara. ('Cept the goth girls, but they don't really factor into this. They've adopted a lifestyle that requires eye make-up. Apples and oranges, people. Apples and oranges.)

Having noticed a trend (or it is a non-trend?), I must search for reasons.

I am currently working on two theories vis a vis the absence of tacky eye make-up on middle school girls at my school:

1.  Sasha and Malia Obama are already having a profoundly positive effect on girls thanks to their fresh-faced and stylish appearance. (I think of them as the anti-Olson twins.)

2.  The economy sucks, and extras like eye make-up for your middle school daughter are no longer in most family's budgets. What they used to spend on sparkles is helping put food on the table.

I'd be happier if #1 were the reason; girls could use some positive peer role models.

But I'm pretty sure it's reason #2, and, much as I mock the make-up when it's there, it makes me sad to see these girls missing out on a truly tacky right of passage that has marked seventh grade for so many who've come before them.

Maybe next year.

There's always hope.

Hide Your Nuts, People

All the freaks seemed to find me today - an assortment of oddballs that popped up wherever I went. The result of spending my day surrounded by strange strangers has left me feeling rather, um, normal by comparison. Perhaps I am delusional, and I am someone else's epitome of oddity, but at least I'm not these folks -

First: School Picture Photographer (a.k.a. The Bunnyman)
Today was school picture day, so I had to go through the yearly horror that is waiting in line and having my mugshot snapped. I have found that pictures of me are slightly more tolerable if I smile without showing my teeth. True, it can get a bit smirky, but at least my eyes aren't all squinty and bizarre, right?

So that was my plan.
The toothless smile.
Check!

The photographer whose station I end up with has a stuffed blue rabbit attached to the top of his camera. (Note: I loathe Blue Bunny ice cream, so he was already on my bad side.) Anyhow, he wasn't happy with the smirky smile I was trying to cling to while looking relaxed and casual and not at all like someone who's being told to tilt her head fifteen degrees to the left and tuck her chin under just a bit.

Once he's got me all posed up, I can tell it's time. He's about to take the picture. I try to keep my eyes relaxed and fight the urge to blink. He says, "Okay, now give me a great big smile just like - this guy!" And as he says it, he opens his hand that is just to the left of the camera. In the center of his palm he has drawn a big smiley face with Sharpie marker.

It was the schtickiest thing I've ever seen.
And it made me grin.
Damn you, Bunnyman.
I shall curse your name every time I look at my squinty little eyes on my new ID badge.

Second: Fellow Target Shopper (a.k.a. Talkative Tampon Lady)
I was in the politely-dubbed feminine hygiene (where the clean women shop, I guess) aisle at Target tonight when this twentysomething woman appeared next to me and proceeded to narrate her entire tampon selection process.

"Hmmm, tampons, tampons, tampons. Oh, yes, over here. I need the regulars. Reg-u-lars, not the supers. Hello? Generics? Where do they hide the generics? Oh, here. Man, I just LOVE having my period." 

And she did it all in this singsongy voice. I half expected her to throw in the occasional "tra-la-la!" as she went on and on.

This seems like the sort of thing that should either be a completely-interior monologue or, if it must be spoken aloud, done in a quiet, talking to myself tone. But not this lady. She was in full-volume conversation mode. Made eye contact and smiled at me too. Like we're besties now or something.

Third: Woman at the Checkout (a.k.a. Visibly Neurotic Lady)
She had a TON of stuff on the conveyor belt, but they only had three lanes open, so I ended up in line behind her. I was kinda zoned out, looking at the mints and skimming the magazine covers, when I noticed the continual prattle of the lady in front of me.

I looked up and quickly figured out that she was methodically going through her pile of purchases and telling the cashier in what order they should be rung up. It wasn't just your run of the mill don't put that loaf of bread under the laundry detergent stuff, either. It was more along the lines of: "Ring up the blue t-shirt first, then the pink one. No, wait! Do the socks before the shirts!" And she had a twitchy, frantic quality about her as she did this. Like she was REALLY worried things might get rung up out of order.

I thought that she might be buying for more than herself and wanted the items bagged according to who they belonged to, but she was ignoring the bagging process entirely. She was fixated on the ringing up - the order of the ringing up.

It was odd enough just at that, but she also kept apologizing to the cashier. "Oh, I'm sorry. I know. I know. Oh, wait! We need the Life Savers next!"

It got to the point where the maternal instincts within the high-school aged cashier kicked in, and she started soothing the woman with, "It's okay. You're fine. We'll get it all right. You'll be fine."

Then the couple who were fighting - loudly - about the fact that he'd wanted to go to Wal-Mart instead of Target pulled in line behind me. Obviously, their entire shopping experience had been nothing but a series of disappointments, and he was about to enumerate them to her and once and for all prove how dumb she was to have dragged him into this damn store.

I was so glad Visibly Neurotic Lady was done.
She was in WAY too fragile a state to be exposed to that.

Community Briefs

Our community newspaper is often an unintentional source of humor. It tries so hard to be folksy with its profiles of local valedictorians and stories about the neighbor's dog who's related to Bo Obama, but it usually devolves into petty little rants about who can park their boat trailer where and the correct protocol for displaying the flag.

I quote this week's Community Briefs, a section that highlights upcoming events of interest, verbatim:

Maplewood Mall is hosting the Bakugan Battle Brawlers Ultimate Battle Tour and a Women's and Children's Expo this weekend.

Let the juxtaposition soak in a moment there.

The Expo is throughout the mall. Exhibitors include home-based businesses, child care, OB/Gyn Services, health, beauty, college and career opportunities and more.

The Battle Tour is in the Sears Court. Challenge other players and get tips from experts.

How often do you see the terms Battle Tour and OB/Gyn Services in the same article?!

Do you think a lot of people will attend both?

This Time It's Personal

Obscured by the sounds of running water and my toothbrush, I could have sworn I heard my husband say, "According to the scale, I lost thirty pounds since last week."

"Fwee pawnds?" I replied, mouth filled with toothpaste.

"No, not three. Thirty."

Since he didn't have a bout of dysentery or cut off one of his arms last week, a dead battery in the scale seemed the most logical explanation. "Oh, don't change the battery until I have a chance to try it too. I want to know what it's like to get on the scale and feel all tiny!"

Now, I know that men lose weight more easily than women (our bodies need to cling to fat to protect unborn babies, survive the Donner Party, etc.), so I've taken my husband's fifteen to my four pound loss this summer with a grain of salt. (Just a grain, though. Water retention, yanno.)

When I stepped on the scale I saw that, to my dismay, it only registered a twenty pound loss.

Not thirty.

Twenty.

Apparently, it is easier for men to lose imaginary weight as well.

Hmph!

A Tip Relating to Shoes and Relativity

When shoe shopping online, if you look at the $800 Ferragamo loafers first and then move to the $450 Taryn Rose suede flats, by the time you get to the Repetto ballet slippers for $245, they seem like a bit of a bargain, really.

Today, I Confess ...

... as I heard the classroom door at my daughter's daycare close behind me at drop-off, I let out a little sigh of relief.

... I have read only one book this summer. It was a diet book. And I didn't finish it.

... I need an inordinate amount of "me time".

... when Ace of Bass comes on the radio, I turn it up and sing along. I know all the words.

... I knew there was dog pee on the carpeting, but I really wanted to check my email and eat lunch, so I did those things first and let it soak in a bit longer.

... I'm starting to think that buying beige carpeting was a bad idea.

... I'm better at forgiving the dog than I am at forgiving people.

... I am looking forward to going back to work - but not necessarily to seeing everyone.

... I'm pissed at Austin's mom for putting a chastising little note in my daughter's cubby, reminding us we need to RSVP for her son's birthday party, even if we're not coming. Like she's Emily Fucking Post. And like I've ever met her or could even pick her kid out of a line-up.

... I can be petty.

... I screen.

... I feel all giddy about how clean my teeth are after I use my Waterpik.

... I hid Chutes & Ladders because I can't stand playing it.

... I can't put the apples and bananas in the fruit bowl unless I tear off those ugly stickers first. I turn the pears so their stickers don't show.

... I inflate my self-esteem by judging people in the supermarket based on what they have in their carts. I know that I am superior to anyone buying a Swanson's frozen dinner, and I roll my eyes at the Lean Cuisine people.

... when something stressful happens, my first instinct is to drive to the bakery and buy a cupcake.

... I am a praise junkie.

... I paid $2.99 to watch Fast Times at Ridgemont High on pay-per-view instead of finishing up the painting in the kitchen. Judge Reinhold rocks.

I Hate This Part

Every fall our school does this what I did over my summer vacation slide show, and we're all supposed to submit pictures of ourselves committing whatever wacky, school-appropriate hijinks we committed over the summer months.

And I hate it.

It's not that I have any issue with looking at the pictures of my colleagues holding up grandbabies and real big fish, etc.; that's actually kinda fun. It's the having my picture taken - and then put on display - part that bothers me.

You see, I am the least photogenic person on Earth.

I do not believe that I am inherently ugly, per se; it's just that my finer qualities do not translate to photographs well. So, here I am, a not completely unattractive woman with all kinds of pictures of me looking like I have an oddly-discolored face, or one eye that is much larger than the other, or fifteen chins. You get the idea.

Consequently, very few non-required pictures of me get taken.

As I look through our family pictures from our trip to Tokyo (the sort of thing that seems slide show worthy), most of the images are of the scenery or my daughter, who does not carry my non-photogenic baggage.

But I feel that one of the unwritten rules of the welcome back slide show is that we, the staff, must actually appear in the pictures. I can't just send one of Tokyo scenery and not expect to get a certain degree of flak about it.

So I need to find one that I'm in.

In our digital "pile" of pictures, though, most of them that include me are taken from behind - since my husband is snapping away as I walk on to the next sight to be seen. Now, I have enough issues with sending in a picture of my face, how do you suppose I'm going to do sending in a picture of my backside? (Rearview picture self-assessment: butt's too big, but calves are pretty decent. Must throw away those plaid shorts; they're not doing me any favors.)

There is an okay one of me passed out on the bus. We're on our way to the airport, I have a wicked case of food poisoning, and my daughter is sitting beside me making goofy faces.

Is it odd that the picture I find least-revolting is one in which I'm just about to do very unpleasant things to a bathroom at Narita?

Titular

Now, a lot of people make fun of Sex and the City for its overuse of the pun. 

I for one appreciate a clever play on words and like the fact that, having seen all the episodes numerous times, I can immediately set myself in the right frame of mind (comic, tragic, poignant, etc.) for any episode as soon as the theme song winds down and those white, lowercase letters appear against the black screen.

I find that as I'm trying to come up with the title for a new blog, I often click into SATC pun mode. It gets the job done. And I'm usually pleased with the results. 

Here are, in no particular order, my ten favorite Sex and the City episode titles:

•  "The Fuck Buddy" - Yes, blunt is beautiful.

•  "Are We Sluts?" - I love that they dared to ask the question that pretty much everyone with HBO was asking about these women. 

•  "Belles of the Balls" - A pun with bonus clever points for linking to all four stories. (Trey gets his sperm analyzed, Steve gets testicular cancer, Samantha gets hired because Richard "admires her balls", and Aidan and Big duke it out playing basketball in the mud.)

•  "I Love a Charade" - Again, a pun. And Nathan Lane getting married? To a woman? Priceless.

•  "A Woman's Right to Shoes" - It seemed like just another clever pun at first, but, after watching the episode, you realize that it really IS about the choices me make. Bonus points for surprising me with that one. And for making me wish I'd registered at Manolo Blahnik when I got married. 

•  "The Post-It Always Sticks Twice" - The second I see these words, I think I'm sorry. I can't. Don't hate me. And then I curse the name Jack Berger. 

•  "Change of a Dress" - More fun with puns. And that scene with Carrie and Aidan in front of the fountain? Heartbreaking!

•  "Politically Erect" - Blunt AND a pun. More bonus clever points!

•  "Running with Scissors" - I love this one because it suits the episode so beautifully. Everyone's mom warned them not to do foolish, dangerous things, and this is the episode that shows us why.

•  "One" - Simple and clever. It's about Brady's first birthday and Miranda's realization that Steve is, in fact, the one. It's also one of my favorite episodes, which for some bizarre reason On Demand tends to skip. Every time I see that this one's an option, I get all happy. 

Nine is a Lot of Inches

I started dabbling in this self-improvement thing a few months ago.

The Campaign for Visible Vegetables has integrated itself quite nicely into our lives, the amount of miles the hubby and I have been hiking continues to grow, and fast food darkens our doorstep with far less frequency. 

Here's the problem, though: I see no change in my body.

Okay, there are SOME changes, like I can hike farther now than I could a few months back - and even jogged a few steps the other day. But I mean the measurable changes just aren't happening. My weight has fluctuated up and down in the same three-pound range since late-March. My clothes still fit about the same. My dreams of putting in the effort and seeing dramatic and rewarding results have been dashed. 

Fed up with the scale, I recently saw a couple mentions of waist size as an indication of fatitude vs. slimliness and realized that I had NO idea what my waist measurement is. Eager for a new means of telling myself that I'm totally not fat, I grabbed the tape measure. 

Bad choice. 

According to Real Age, my waist is about three and a half inches bigger than the big end of "ideal". 

That's not THAT much, right?

But is that the waist measurement statistic I grab on to? 

Of course not.

I decide instead to fixate on the fact that my waist is NINE INCHES bigger than the girl's on Make Me a Supermodel. Now, I appreciate that I am twenty years older than this girl and that I am never going to be a supermodel, but, still, the horror of NINE INCHES burrows into my brain and stays there. 

Nine inches is a lot of inches, yes? 

Now I'm like a dog with a bone with this whole waist measurement thing ...

On Real Age they have a waist loss tracker, so I get in there and enter my data. 

It asks for my goal. 

Um, my goal's not to feel like I tub-o-lard. 

How does that translate into numbers? 

I thought about it for a couple seconds and decided to shoot for the big end of "ideal" since I do have what is politely called a large frame (meaning I have shoulders like a linebacker).

Then it asks for the date by which I will reach this ideal (though still on the big side) state.

Great. 

Again, I'm in unfamiliar territory. 

The site tells me that half an inch every two weeks is reasonable. (Can't they just say an inch per month? Or 1.3 cm per fortnight?) I decide that three inches by summer's end should be do-able, so that's what I type in. 

So, now I have a new number to strive for. 

Another benchmark to reach. 

Great.

My real goal for myself, though, is to self-improve in the way that makes me no longer feel compelled to compare myself to supermodel wannabes. 

To reach that elusive goal of not caring about what the scale and the tape measure say.

To just appreciate the strength of my legs. 

My lungs. 

My heart. 

Now THAT would be some improvement. 

But, until then ...

Dark Corners

When I was in eighth grade, my best friend Michelle and I trudged through the snow to get to the ice rink. It was after dinner on a school night, dark out, and about a block from my house. We had a blast zipping around on our skates, laughing and talking way too loud about school, boys, etc. It was one of those perfect, joyous moments of friendship, when the world around you disappears, and everything just feels right. 

Then we went to the warming house.

As we were taking off our skates, three older boys - probably juniors or seniors - came in with their hockey equipment. I got my skates off and started putting on my shoes while Michelle struggled with a stubborn knot in her shoelace. 

Then the boys started talking about us.

They talked about how they'd divvy us up. 

Who'd get which one of us. 

How we'd be shared. 

What each of them was going to do to each of us.

My shoes were on by this time, and the voice in my head was screaming, "Run! The door's right there! You can make it if you move now!" 

But Michelle's shoelace was still knotted, and now that her body had gone into fight-or-flight mode, her hands were shaking, making it even harder to open her shoe, get her foot in it, and get out that door. 

We were a only block from my house, but the park seemed completely isolated and dangerous now. It crossed my mind that all the windows on all the neighboring houses were closed. No one would hear us scream. 

I considered leaving Michelle behind. 

Saving myself. 

When did it become so difficult to put your shoes on?! 

Can't you run through the snow in your socks?!

But I couldn't leave her.

So I stayed.

Michelle finally got her shoe on, and we made it out the door, hearing the boys cackling at how funny they'd been scaring those two little girls. 

My heart pounded in my throat as we made our way home. 

We didn't talk. 

We stomped as fast as we could through the foot-high snow. 

And glanced back, afraid they might be following us. 

It didn't skate for five years after that.

It's one of those memories I keep stashed away in the dark corners of my mind. It came out into the light again last week as my husband, daughter and I were hiking at the nature center. 

We came around a corner and met a couple older, tough-looking boys coming down the trail from the opposite direction. They barely glanced at us, but, all of a sudden, the fear I'd felt in the warming house resurfaced.

We were not far from home but in an isolated place. 

That was all it took to make me feel scared and vulnerable. 

For most of our hike, even though I was carrying on a conversation with my husband and noticing the birds and flowers with my daughter, my mind was reeling with horrible possibilities:

How my husband couldn't fight or run with our girl strapped to his back. 

How they'd hit me. 

How I'd be dragged off into the woods. 

Or a ditch. 

How they could hurt my daughter. 

How no one would hear us scream. 

Whether I could hurt them enough by stabbing them with a big stick to make them go away.

And I kept glancing back, afraid they might be following us. 

Stranger in a Strange Land

The part of the city where I work is not the part where I live, and sometimes I feel like I don't quite fit with the locals in that neck of the woods. 

For example ...

At 3:22 today I was about six blocks from work, in the left-turn lane, waiting for that blasted little arrow to turn green. I noticed that the car ahead of me had a decal in the rear window. 

It read: Badass Girlz Drive Badass Toys. 

The car? A Toyota Corolla. Yep. I know. Totally badass.

As the light was taking forever to change, I had some free time on my hands to ponder the situation. 

My Thoughts:

•  Shouldn't it read Badass Girlz Drive Badass Toyz  (or Badass Girls Drive Badass Toys)? Seriously, if you're gonna eschew tradition and signify the plural form of a noun with a z instead of an s, you should consistently adhere to your own rule, no? You don't hear Elmer Fudd correctly pronouncing his r's from time to time; no, it's "Wascal Wabbit" every damn time. No exceptions. That guy's as dedicated as De Niro, and we all respect him for that. 

•  I'm all for gender equity, but this decal is so obviously a rip-off of the more commonly seen Badass Boyz Drive Badass Toyz, without the inherent charm of its predecessor's rhyming couplet format. Sequels are never as good as the original (exception: The Empire Strikes Back), and, Ladies, we deserve better than a shoddy sequel of a window cling. Dammit, if I want to tout my car's badassness to the masses, I deserve to do so in rhyme too. And in an original rhyme at that. I am shocked to find myself so blatantly discriminated against in this day and age. Things would be SO different right now if Hillary had won. 

•  Again, badass? On a Corolla? Is that supposed to be ironic or something?

The green arrow appeared - fleetingly. It only lit up long enough for the cars in line ahead of Badass Corolla and me, so we were stuck there together through another cycle. I was pretty well tapped out on judgmental thoughts about her, but, being where I was, another show pulled in line behind me. And this one had audio.

Actually, I felt the presence of the car behind me before I was even aware that I was hearing anything. It was some non-descript Chevy sedan, driven by a teenage boy who had, apparently, discovered the secret location of the volume and bass controls on his stereo. It was all bass. Entirely bass. Treble need not apply. Only bass. 

I sensed an odd fluttering in my lungs and bowels as the Chevy pulled up behind me. My eardrums started pushing in and out with each pulse of the bass, and I wished I had some gum to chew to help them pop. 

I assume what Mr. Big Audio Dynamite was playing was music, but with only the bass audible, it really just seemed like a series of low-frequency pulses being sent down through the earth. Perhaps he was calling out to a herd of far-off elephants. Or searching for oil deposits. I duuno. I was just trying to get home from work. 

I've always taken issue with the whole play-the-car-stereo-excessively-loud thing. It demonstrates such an odd combination of not giving a crap what other people think while simultaneously seeking their attention. Desperately. 

I could see Mr. Big Audio Dynamite in my rearview mirror, and he had that smug expression on his face. He was stickin' it to all of us and our stoopid rules. He'd had to behave at school the whole damn day, and now he was showing the world who was boss.  

And everyone at the intersection - the elderly couple in the car next to me, the middle school girls crossing at the light, the dog tied up in the neighbor's backyard  - had the same expression on their faces - the one that says: That is just so sad. 

Finally, the arrow lit up green again, and we all went on our way.

You don't suppose Badass Corolla and Big Audio Dynamite are out there somewhere, blogging about that judgmental-looking woman listening to MPR in her practical German sedan, do you?

Cinderella's Balls

As spring weather brings out the necessity to speak to the tween girls I work with about appropriate dress (because they are either unaware of the concept or just think it's okay to dress as if they're going to be waiting tables at Hooters instead of attending middle school), I can't help but remember prom season of 1985 - when, even though my dress could be worn off-the-shoulder, I chose not to do so, because that seemed like WAY too grown-up of a thing for me to do.

matching cumberbunds = totally rad

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Last week I ...

went hiking three times, 

did not eat ice cream after dinner (but I wanted to),

ate fruit with breakfast every morning,

and only had one BAD meal (pizza, two slices) 

... and gained one pound.

?!?!?!

Straight Hair, Limited Options

Yes, 

I've had 

the same 

haircut 

since 

the Bicentennial. 

A Healthier Alternative to Gwyneth

I'm gonna go make my Team Scarlett t-shirt now.

Twice Shy

I've hiked at the nature center by my house at least a hundred times and have only seen a snake there once; still, every time I pass the spot where I saw it, I think "This is where I saw that snake," and look around cautiously.

In My Day It Was "Afternoon Delight"

My neighbor's son and his friends are good boys because they told his eight year-old sister and her friend to stop screaming the lyrics to"Crank That Souljah Boy" on the swing set because, "Those words are bad, and you shouldn't say things if you don't know what they mean."