This could have been in your reader this week!

Here are the blog posts that I started to write this week.
They've been aborted. But they may be born again soon. Could I be any more politically correct?

Your forebear's foreskin: If you've never received a phone call from your father telling you that he was about to get circumcised, I congratulate you on your good fortune and subsequent excellent mental health.

First Love: When I was five, I was in love with Lenny. We met when we were three, but I played hard to get for the first two years.  

In-Laws, Out-Laws: My in-laws left after a three week visit, and not before telling my husband that he should hire someone to cook so that the kids had "proper meals".  

In Defense of Husbandrinka:  Err...

Don't Mind the Black Guy with His Hand Up  My Vagina:  I don't know what your "before I go to the hospital to deliver the baby to do list" looked like, but mine had "tell of course we're not racist future grandparents that my OB/GYN is young and African American to avoid potential awkward scene at the hospital.  Because they think that only old white Jewish men are doctors. " 

Nice Capades

Every year, I take $120 from my wallet and flush it down the toilet. It's a very special ritual, also known as buying ice skates for my daughter. She ice skates about half a dozen times in them and then for no apparent reason, her feet grow over the summer and by the next winter she's all Cinderella's stepsister-like and her ice skates don't fit.  I'm trying to get her to start smoking to stunt her growth a bit, but she's resisting it.  Apparently it's not healthy of something.

So I placed last year's skates on Craigslist.

Reidell girl's ice skates
Size 6, model 121, white ice skates.
Gently used, some markings and a few scratches.

$50/ BO.

I thought that my ad was very to the point and was overall Madison Avenue-style excellent.  I filled out a deposit slip for the $50 that I was sure would be coming my way soon and picked out a spot for  my future Clio on the mantle.

For the first few days, I did not get any responses. I did not panic because it's not like as soon as you see a Coke commercial you run out immediately to get a can, especially if it's like in the middle of the night or you just came out of a surgical procedure or something.  The next few days brought similar results.  It was getting harder to keep my spirits up but papa encouraged me by saying "$50? Are you insane?!  You should pay people to take that crap away from you."  

But then on the sixth day, it happened.  I got a response from someone who truly appreciated my ad:

From your post you seem very interesting so i thought i'd break the ice. I'm 21
years old and single again. I recently got out of a long term relationship and I
have totally forgotten how to date. I'm not looking for anything serious right
off the bat but I would like to go on casual dates again and get to know people,
if it turns into something more then no problems. I'm somewhat shy, a bit
eccentric and I can be very blunt. I wear t-shirts, play video games, have a WOW
account,watch anime, and I love pizza and sushi.

I know that the customer is always right and all that, but what the fuck that does this mean?  I put an ad for ice skates and I seem like an interesting person?  I can just see him thinking--"intriguing. Such small feet. And she no longer ice skates... There must be a story behind it!"  And how do you get out of a long term relationship when you're 21?  (AND ALSO--I realized that when my daughter was born, 10 years ago, he was 11 years old. OMG.)

Oh, and he forgot how to date?  Well, I haven't been on the dating scene myself in over 12 years, but from what I seem to recall, you find people to date on, oh, I don't know, dating sites as opposed to "selling children's ice skates" sites.  Although it's certainly a relief that he wears t-shirts because the last thing I need right now is to get involved with one of those hardline-against-t-shirt wearing freaks.

Is this what it's come down to? Do I need to start a relationship with this anime lover to sell the skates? Because I love pizza too.

The Facial

You know how sometimes you’ll be watching an infomercial and suddenly you'll be really grateful that you are not a paraplegic and can reach for the remote control and change the channel because although at first it was kind of fun to watch someone trying to sell you a pan that makes heart shaped pancakes, after ten minutes of that crap the bloom is off the rose and it has turned into a type of torture that not even the Bush administration would condone?

That’s what facials are like for me, except you can’t turn off the fucking infomercial and have to instead lay there with steam beating down on your face, while the esthetician tells you that you need things like lotions with vitamin A and C, Privage cream made with something that is used in organ transplants (I KNOW!) and some other shit that fights stress and the environment. I lay totally still and make “mmhm” noises that can signify anything from “ring me up!” to “shut the fuck up, please." Every time that I have a facial, I forget that it is basically an infomercial for all their products, with some steam thrown in.

But first, I had some stress. Russian Olga led me into the facial room and I set my bag on the floor and she said, "No, no, no!" as though I had just taken out a machete, and she grabbed my purse from the floor and put it on the chair.
"They say that you should never put your purse on the floor, because that means that you won't have money," she admonished me. I didn't bother asking who "they" were, I am well schooled in Russian superstitions. For the uninitiated and the unmedicated, basically anything that you routinely do in your daily life is rooted in some superstition that you will give you bad luck, no money and have you dead by dawn. I don't know why none of these Russian geniuses realized that they didn't have money because they were living in a fucking Communist country and not because their purse was on the floor, but whatever.

My purse secured on a chair, thereby guaranteeing my prosperity and Olga says, "Take off your top and I will give you a relaxing shoulder massage. You can also take off your jeans, whatever relaxes you most. Just lie down on the table, under the blankets." And she leaves the room.

I don't know about you, but what relaxes me most is people not telling me to take off my top. But I also obey authority, so I take off my sweater, and of course I'm now freezing, so I burrow under the blankets and pull them up to my chin in case they have a special on mummification or something. So Olga comes back and I make an oath to myself--I will not spend a penny beyond the gift certificate, I will not buy anything at all, and she inspects my skin and says, "Your skin is dry.  You need super moisture facial, it's $20 extra" and I say, "ok!"  I am hoping that the extra moisturizing facial comes with the complimentary scrubbing off of the word "sucker" from my forehead.

Olga tells me that I will soon be so comfortable that I will be asleep.

Apparently, I look like one of those people who enjoys having conversations in my sleep, because as soon as my extra twenty dollar facial begins, Olga has some diagnostic questions for me. Like what do I use on my face? I feel good about my "Oil of Olay" answer because my dermatologist and Consumer Reports are behind it, but I have a feeling that Olga would react better if I told her that I have acid thrown on my face routinely.  She tells me that it's a terrible choice and that I need to invest more in my skin.

The facial itself is very pleasant, but the hard sell continues, "You know, you have to take care of your skin," Olga tells me.  "Because you only have one skin."  This is why I could never sell anything to anyone.  Because as soon as I saw something like, "tell customer that she only has one skin," I'd be immediately signing up for welfare.

* * *

Confession:  I can't figure out how to end this post without making it epic length,  so I will do a quick and fake Q&A:

Q:  Did Russian Olga ever ask you if you spoke Russian?

A:  No, she did not, thankfully.

Q: Did you buy any of the products that she recommended?

A:  No.  She recommended two things that I absolutely needed for my one and only skin, each one cost over $120.  I said that I couldn't do it in this economy.

Q: Did you tip?

A: I did!

Q:  Why didn't you just tell her that you preferred not to be sales pitched during the facial?

A:  Because I was afraid that she would kill me.

Q:  Is there anyone in the whole world who is more wonderful than you are?

A:  Of course, many people!  Although they're probably not as modest as I am.

Fucked Up Catalogs

You know how sometimes you'll be on an airplane (usually when you're flying somewhere) and suddenly there will be turbulence and you'll think "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE, ESPECIALLY ME!" and then you sort of calm down and realize that a trained professional is flying the plane, and not the Madagascar II penguins and feel all better? And then you remember that the trained professionals have to submit to mandatory drug testing and feel even better about the whole thing?

Well, wouldn't it be great if other professionals had to submit to mandatory drug testing as well? For example, those people who set up catalog shots.  

Seriously, if you're used to getting catalogs, especially this time of year, take a look at them. And then let's try to guess what drugs these people are taking.

Exhibit 1:



What were the directions for this shot? 

"Ok, Miss, you thread the popcorn, because that's fun and you, big guy, look at the dog. But not like you're thinking of sodomizing him or anything, just like you're all-American and like dogs. Yes! This is the scene we need to sell long underwear to people who like to spend the most boring weekend together in the history of boredom."

Exhibit 2:

Ok, so I've been to FAO Schwartz and they really have all these huge stuffed toys in their store. I always assumed that they were purchased either by Ricky Schroeder's character on "Silver Spoons" or by the Home for the Mentally Insane for some kind of Jungle Therapy, but never in my wildest dreams (get it? WILD?) did I think that these enormous animals were all going to be staged outside in an evolutionary incorrect manner. Hello? A unicorn? And on what planet are the dinosaurs romping around with zebras? On planet LSD, I say.

Exhibit 3:


I don't know what to say. 

"Can I get a stuffed zebra, daddy?" 

"No, we're in the middle of a recession." 

"Why can't I get a stuffed unicorn?" 

" Because you're a whiny bitch, just like your mother, that's why!" shoves head through newspaper. 

Mother:  "You're so funny! I'm falling in love with you all over again!"

I want to know who thought that this image was going to sell pajamas, unless they were going for that subliminal "buy our shit or we'll bash your head in, too" thing.

So, please join me in insisting that these people be tested for drugs. Because we, and our children, deserve less fucked up catalogs.
Thank you and God Bless America.

Birth Story

A few months ago, my best blog friend Stacey posted her son's birth story and asked her readers for theirs. Birth stories, not children. I think.

I'm still not ready to post mine (I hope that the blog world can live with this devastating news), but there are two things that I will never forget about the birth of my daughter. Well, three, if you count the whole miracle of birth, getting to hold my daughter in my arms for the first time thing. But besides that, two. And I will share them with you for free right now and may they serve as a guide forever, amen.

ONE: When you have a c-section, and are lying there and feel all sorts of tugging and pulling, one thing you don't want to hear is "ok, now let's put everything back in her," from the mechanic, I mean, the doctor. Because shouldn't they teach them that their patients can hear them in, you know, medical school? And it sort of grosses the patient out to think of her internals being on the little night table there.

SECOND: When your mother comes to the hospital and tries to entice you to do the nurse-mandated post-C-section walking by saying, "hey, why don't you walk over to the scales to weigh yourself, I bet you lost tons of weight since you had the baby!" and you waddle over to the scale and realize that you weigh five pounds more than you did before you delivered the baby, it really would behoove everyone within screaming distance to say, "the scale must be broken" as opposed to the apparently popular, "I hope they didn't leave any metal instruments in your uterus!"

Thank you.

No Offense

There are expressions that really rub me the wrong way.

For example, "rub me the wrong way". Is it me, or is that sort of pervy? Like the implication that the way that you're rubbing me now is doing absolutely nothing for me, but if you were rubbing me in a better way, whoa, Nellie. Gross, right? And not just because the "whoa, Nellie" reference sort of implies that I have a Catherine the Great fetish for horses. Which I totally don't. No offense.

And actually, "no offense" is another one. When, would you say, is a good time to use it? I have a friend of size who says that it really annoys him when someone will be telling a story and say, "yeah, so this fat guy, no offense, goes to the bakery." I understand why it is annoying to my friend, but I dont understand why someone would feel compelled to say it in the first place.

OMG Im typing this on Husbandrinkas laptop and one of the keys just flew off. Can you guess which one? I wonder if hell notice (he will, that is, not Hades) and if hell blame me. FUME. I did nothing wrong, I was just typing along. You are my witness, ok? Maybe Ill convice him that contractions are a part of the right wing conspiracy or something. If you dont hear from me soon, send help. Hold on, Im going to switch computers.


Anyway. My seven year old son recently started saying "no offense". At first I thought that it was adorable, the way he would say, "No offense, mom, but I am full." It sounded so grown up and polite.

But then last weekend I overheard him explaining to a friend how to use the phrase. He said, "It's when you say something rude, but you don't want the other person's feelings to be hurt."

Huh.

Makes perfect sense.

Except, when exactly does THAT happen?

"God, you're a fucking moron. No offense."

"Hey, have you considered a complete facial reconstruction? No offense."

"Are you wearing a strap-on ass? Because, no offense, but I didn't think it could get that big."

But the fun thing about "no offense" is that everyone is programmed to say "none taken" when they hear it.

"I am going to have you killed. No offense."

"None taken!"

Really? The next time that someone says that to you, why not say, "You know, I am offended. Being killed would really hurt my feelings and is just not ok with me. Now, let me rub you the right way."

You Say Tomato

So earlier this week, I had a conversation with my friend, who works in the same office as I do, about how to pronounce "clitoris". You know, whether the accent is on the first syllable or the second and how come no one ever makes the case for the third syllable.

He asked, very logically, why not just avoid all the conflict and go with "clit", which is all fine and good unless you're speaking to your father in law or something and you don't want to be so informal.

Then he directed me to dictionary.com, where I could click on the little megaphone icon and it would give me the correct pronunciation. So I did. Mystery solved. Unfortunately, because the volume on my computer was turned up to intergalactic, the mystery was solved for everyone working on my floor.

Sometimes it's better not to engage your friends at work in conversations about clitori.

This is just further proof about how I suck at small talk.

Light in August?

I am pro-choice and all, but I think that pregnant women should be forced to have a scarlet "P" embroidered on their outer garments, or tattooed on their foreheads-totally up to them. In a pinch, I'd settle for one of those "Baby Inside" t-shirts, with an arrow pointing to the uterus, although it is actually targeting the knees.

Because we have all been victimized by the "When are you due?"/"I'm not pregnant" mortification that for some reason is never followed by a natural disaster. You know, a natural disaster without any fatalities or injuries that nonetheless distracts everyone and makes an awkward conversation that they were enduring a vague memory.

As a result, I will be damned if I ever ask anyone second trimesterish when she is due. My rule is that unless the woman tells me that she is pregnant, I have to see the baby crowning before I acknowledge her pregnancy.

But this plan isn't fool-proof, either. Because in early March I ran into a neighbor in the elevator--"hey, I haven't seen you in a while," I said. "What's new?"
"Well," she patted her stomach. "I'm about to have a baby."
"Oh?" I was in cartoon-like amazement. "I had no idea that you are pregnant." Apparently, I thought instead that she had a pillow attached to her midsection or that she was a moose. My attempt at complimenting her on the svelteness backfired.

This could have been avoided if she had just worn a "Baby inside" t-shirt. Over her coat. Or maybe an ankle bracelet that announced her pregnancy. Yes, I know that pregnant women's ankles swell and may even cause the whiners discomfort. But think of the peace of mind that it will offer the rest of us.