For those of you expecting warm, fuzzy feelings, go someplace else.
Being pregnant is like having a small, quiet parasite living in your stomach. You can’t eat, you can’t sleep in anymore (nature calls) and you get an intimate appreciation of what your food looks like after it’s decided that your stomach is a stupid place to be, and it now craves open air.
They call this the first trimester.
The good things: You can’t scoop cat litter anymore because the bacteria will kill you (mild exaggeration, don’t be alarmed, fellow preggos), so this is no longer your job. You don’t need an excuse to find the smell of toast disgusting when someone fails at using the break room toaster oven. You get to buy really nice fruit (we’re talking fresh cut pineapple and berries) and nobody complains that you are wasting money. Of course, you will probably not keep that pineapple in your stomach, but it’s pretty nice going down.
The better things:They’ve invented pasteurized everything. So, you can still eat feta cheese, which means Greek salads aren’t dead to you for 9 months. They’ve invented lollipops just for you. You get real close with your doctors, because they introduce you to your ovaries with the ultrasound machine. Your husband gets really extra nice, and that sack around your belly? It’s not fat! It’s BABYJUICE.
Finally, people get absurdly happy when you share your news. I don’t know about you, but it’s pretty nice to make people absurdly happy with absolutely no effort on your part at all. I wish everyone took all my news like that.
I’d say “I went to the store.” And then you’d say, “You went to the store!? I went to the store once!” And someone else would chime in, “I own a store! Stores are the best, just wait ‘til you go to another one.” And people would email you all the time with advice like, “The green store is more fun than the red store. You should totally try the green store. We all love stores.”
Of course, by that point in their lives, no one remembers that the store made them puke 12 times a day, and forced them to give blood every 2 weeks. To be fair, it’s possible that this isn’t normal, and my physicians group is made up of highly educated vampires.
Anyway, welcome to the news. I hope it has made you ridiculously happy. I hope that you jump up and down, at least once, if not with general delight in all things baby, in delight that you will never know your toilet as well as I now know mine.
It’s going to be a heck of a lot of fun when it’s born – I’m going to teach it secondary and tertiary colors instead of rainbow order, and the ABCs backwards, and then watch all the other kindergarten kids’ minds break when I send it to school. That’s what YOU get, children of traditional thinkers.
Free Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (thanks to Kahn for the heads up)
Free Starbucks coffee (thanks to the guys on 114 for making mine iced)
Participating in the decision-making of your country (If you don’t show up, don’t harrumph about it, you had your chance.)
Only Acceptable Reasons Not To Vote
You are frequently mauled by irate, unpatriotic bears, and have consequently lost faith in the democratic system
You are severely allergic to elementary school children, and cannot enter the polling place lest you die
You are deceased and considered ineligible
What Will the Voting Bring?
The first African-American president in the United States of America
Blatant cheating followed by completely ineffectual attempts to correct it
A landslide victory for the Green-Rainbow Party followed by the realization that there are more than two valid political parties
And You?
Go out on a line here, and make a prediction. I won’t hold you to it.
Unless you are right. Then you will be my new authority on all things psychic, and I will get you your very own silverback gorilla (I know a guy), which you will have to hide from PETA because they may or may not be endangered.
There’s nothing like sitting in a meeting across from your boss, in an open room with no conference table between you, for 45+ minutes, then realizing that your fly was unzipped the whole time.
This is how I started my day today.
The Solution
Since I like to encourage my co-workers’ appreciation and amusement at the suffering of others, I returned to my desk fully zipped, buttoned & clasped (the pants I wore today were kind of complex) and promptly shared the story with Cynthia, who sits in the cube behind me.
My grandmother taught me that when you’re completely mortified because of something asinine that you’ve done, you should always tell on yourself, and laugh about it thoroughly with others.
Otherwise, no matter how inconsequential the situation, it will just fester and embed itself in your psyche so that 19 years later, when you think of first grade, all you can remember is your horrible teacher making fun of you, because apparently you can’t tell the difference between a bean and a pea. And even as I write this, I’m still cringing.
Being able to laugh at yourself somehow takes the sting out of your embarrassment. Plus, you get a good story that you can share and then forget about. I don’t know why this works, but for some reason, it does.
Incidentally, the word “embarrassing” has entirely too many letters, and should be roundly punished.
And You?
What about you? Tell me about an embarrassing moment that you handled gracefully. Or, because it’s even more fun, one that you really didn’t, and wish you had.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been sicker than a half way run-over hedgehog on the highway. Most of my organs are still intact, but it’s still been pretty miserable.
To make myself feel better, this post will be about 5 people who have it worse than I do.
1. Jackie Berg. Jackie is the most recent Survivor Reject. And yes, I watch Survivor. It is the perfect show for aspiring world dominatrices. You slowly eliminate your enemies (and then allies) one by one, and then cackle over their burned out torches.
Anyway, it sucks to be her, because her tribe decided that physical & mental skills were less important than keeping around expendable dead weight named Kelly. Survivor has 12.85m viewers, according to this completely arbitrary site. Have you ever been humiliated in front of 12.85m people?
2. AIG’s executives. Despite their canny financial aptitude and frugality, the financial crisis has been hard on AIG’s executives. They all live in shacks and eat only rice and beans.
Oh wait. No they don’t. They go to spas and then steal my #)$*#*(%&($) tax money. Burn in Hell, AIG. Roast evenly on both sides.
3. Anyone with SARS. My sickness sucks, but SARS is worse and less curable. SARS is no joke. Although, when I was studying aboard in Italy, there were a lot of asian tourist groups with Burberry face masks hanging around the Duomo, presumably because of the risk of SARS. Near the start of the semester, I came down with bronchitis. Just to have fun with the tourists, I used to sidle up to them, look alarmed, and start coughing my face off. That was fun.
4. Anyone with stocks. According to my financial guy, the market’s dropped 40% from its high. My mutual fund weeps at night, in cold, dark corners at the end of the earth. That is where the sad funds go.
Luckily, I have approximately 200 more years before I can retire, or approximately 5 more years before I carry off the celebrity kidnapping that will fund my empire. Think A Life Less Ordinary with no singing, deux ex machinas, or berets.
5. The staff at the new Dunkin Donuts on Route 114. Apparently, it takes 6 people and 20 minutes to make an egg and cheese sandwich. I understand. This is a complex alchemy. There are eggs AND cheese involved. That’s TWO forms of dairy. And let’s not get into how difficult it must be to differentiate different types of bagels. I mean, they’re all SHAPED the same.
But the reason it sucks to be them isn’t their lack of skills or IQ. It is because, in retaliation, I will firebomb their cars. Let me give another cinematic example, but with a clearer visual. Think the Godfather, when Michael’s Sicilian sweet patootie gets into the car before it blows up. Yeah. Like that 6 times. Pew pew pew pew pew pew.
Gee, that was sure cathartic. You should try it. Whose life sucks more than yours?
And just for fun, let’s end with Avenue Q’s timeless classic, “What Do You Do with a BA in English/It Sucks to Be Us:”
I asked Jenny, Princess of Candy Mountain, for a Bag of Awesome. It’s good to demand impossible things when you’re taking over the world, in order to test the resourcefulness of people around you.
Cleverly, instead of insisting there was no such thing, Jenny immediately recommended a bag of Aquatic Oceanic Gummis.
“Aquatic Oceanic Gummis!?” I asked. “I will take two bags!” (Candy makes me excitable.)
Cynthia with the Contents of the Bag of Awesome
I took one of the bags to work, and asked Cynthia to help me examine it, to see if it really was a bag of awesome or if I had once again become the victim of cruel marketing.
After going through several keyboards (the tests were quite strenuous), we came to a decision. It was indeed a Bag of Awesome, but it was gone too fast and sadly, it did not have enough octopuses.
The Mysterious Sea Beast
On a side note, we could not identify this gummy in the course of our examination.
What the heck kind of sea creature do you think this is supposed to be? Any ideas? Also, what impossible demands do YOU like to make on a regular basis?
This morning, Jon & I went to Costco to get new tires, bulk food & enough paper towels to build a small, super-absorbent plane.
Costco is not really a scary place, although sometimes I find their raw meat section intimidating, and once a crafty toddler tried to rip off my wallet at the picnic tables.
That being said, sometimes terrifying things are lurking beneath their shelves:
I get it that Halloween is coming. But when I’m searching for yogurt and a bag of fruit snacks, I don’t want to stumble upon a spider the size of a Smart Car.
Possibly, Costco is trying to push their seasonal merchandise by planting it in weird places throughout the store.
That would be funny, and I would buy 6 or 7 to support this campaign, and then plant them around the office. In high, dark corners of the supply closet. Or halfway hidden behind someone’s workstation, under their desk. Or, better still, stuffed into the credenza in the conference room.
What would you do with 7 gigantic spiders, access to anywhere, and enough time?
On August 26th, my father gave his last sermon prior to retirement from being a pastor for 40 years. Like his many previous sermons, it is thoughtful, truthful, sometimes humorous, and always slightly unsettling when you suddenly find yourself relating to a part of it.
Basically, it’s a good read.
I’d like to thank my Dad for allowing me to post this, and I encourage you to offer comments, all of which will make their way back to Dad. Except the crazy ones. The owners of those will be thoroughly chastised with the wooden pole mentioned in the sermon. (Thwack!)
Without further ado, I invite you to click here to read his sermon, reproduced in its entirety except for our street addresses and a personal part where my father recognizes my mother and her contribution to his life. You have to get the video version to hear that, folks, and it ain’t out yet.
Any typos are mine, as it’s late, and I’ve found that I lack the intrinsic ability to correctly type the word “funerals.” I know it’s disrespectful, but despite that, it still rolls off the fingers as “funderals” every time.
There’s a space for your potatoes, your hamburger and your salad, with little walls in between so your dressing doesn’t leak all over the place and make your bun foul and unclean. (I.e. soggy.)
I love those plates. My food doesn’t like to touch. And yes, I know it all mixes together in my stomach. But, my friends, my taste buds are in my MOUTH.
Boundaries are Good
This need for boundaries also extends to my everyday life. I need a balance of time for myself, for work, for friends, family and my husband, and time for millions of strangers (i.e. the internet).
Work time ends promptly at 4:30, except on Wednesdays when it extends to 5:00 to make up for an extra 30 minutes at lunch. This is the first job where I’ve ever held to a schedule, and forced myself to eat somewhere besides at my desk. I’ve always worked 9, 10, 11 hour days, plus coming home and checking my email. If it’s every once in awhile, you suck it up and pitch in. If it’s every day, you’re a dope and need to be shaken soundly.
This Took a Long Time to Learn.
I was given a sound mental shake at my last job, which was a lot like the time my high school Bio class repeatedly carried buckets of water into the woods behind the school in order to put out root fires. I’ve since learned to say to myself, “Class, the forest is burning. Get out or you will be immolated.”
It took an extreme situation for me to make this life change. Some people keep plugging away, members of the bucket brigade for life.
Sometimes, it’s all you can do to keep trying, and I commend that. But, sometimes, you won’t ever see a solution because you’re worn out and just don’t have the energy.
This is When You Should Step In
If you see someone like that, help them. Make sure it’s a real crisis situation, not a personal problem - I’ve gone on crusades before, then found out that I only had half the story. But if there’s a valid beef, help out where you can. You can escalate the problem so the right person is aware of it. You can stand on a chair and scream for help if you need to. Sometimes you just need to be there to listen.
Do what you can, but do it smart. Don’t just pick up a bucket and start hauling in tandem. Assess the situation, and if you’ve got a full-on blazing inferno, don’t try to fix it with small solutions. Gear up for a big change, and call the freaking fire department.
Michael Ian Black’s post Lake Compounce talks about his reluctance to ride a roller coaster with his son. He makes it through twice, but declines a third round, because, as he says, “[I]f we ride it again, Daddy is going to die.”
First I thought, hahaha, Michael Ian Black, you’re old. Then I realized, oh blast, I’m old.
So, here are the Top 10 Reason Why Leanne Is Old:
I only go to concerts with seats. None of this ridiculous stand for 3 hours business. That’s for you crazy leaping fan people.
I know who Matt Lauer is. I watch him in the mornings and wish he did the “where in the world” segment more often.
I remember when libraries didn’t have computer records. I also had a set of encyclopedias, because there was no internet.
I took the SATs when the highest score you could get was 1600.
I’m no longer the youngest person in my office. Not even close - I think 6th? 7th?
Thinking about having children makes me feel warm and fuzzy, rather than nauseated.
I carry around a bag of non-recreational drugs, in case of headaches, muscle spasms, allergy attack, stomach pain or mortal injury. This isn’t hypochondria, I just like to be prepared.
I’m learning to say no to people without guilt, and I’m learning to forgive myself for the fact that sometimes, I just do dumb things.
I am more honest with myself.
Being older’s not the worst thing in the world - there are definite compensations. For one, a facial blemish is no longer directly linked to the imminent destruction of the world. For another, I’m grateful for the time I’ve spent in the company of good people. I’d never want to go back in time and give that up.
Also, imagine having to relearn everything you’ve learned up until now. It would take me years to re-perfect the ability to lift just one eyebrow.
How about you? What makes you feel old, even if you’re not? Who or what makes growing older worthwhile for you? On that note…
My husband and I were driving home from work today when we noticed that the car to our left (pictured above) was about to drive into the side of our car.
Now, it might just be me, but as far as I know, you can’t change lanes if there’s a car parallel to you in the lane you want to be in. This is not manners, road rules, or even common sense. This is a law of physics - matter cannot occupy the same physical space as other matter.
So, needless to say, we were slightly alarmed. The driver kept coming closer and closer to our car, presumably in order to avoid being stuck in a left-turn-only lane.
Here were her options:
Brake, and wait for a clear spot.
Turn left, then retrace your steps or find another route.
Keep driving into the car beside you. It will dematerialize if you wish upon a star.
You can guess which one old 580ERV chose.
As my friend Kate likes to say, “Make a better choice.”
We were moving slowly enough to avoid a crash, and we ended up braking and letting her in. After all, we weren’t sure if she had just accidentally gotten into the wrong lane in the first place. This happens to everyone. The trouble is, in that particular spot, people often use that lane to bypass everyone else and then cut back in, so it’s hard to tell.
So, Tell Me About Your Sense of Fair Play:
Is is okay for people like Illustrious Driver 580ERV to do this if they are just accidentally in the wrong lane and never intended to cut in line?
Is all fair in love, war & traffic - if people can get into the lane, they should do it, and if you don’t like it, stay away from cars.
Or, should we have followed her home, waited until she slept, broken into her car, and filled it with the slain bodies of sea crabs, so it had a nice, fresh aroma when she got up to go to work?
What does your sense of fair play say? What do you do when you’re faced with the hazards of driving with bad drivers? And, in a misguided attempt to channel all your driving rage ever in one vengeful act, do you know where I can get a couple hundred sea crabs?
