you know you're getting fat and old when...

so it's occured to me recently that though i don't FEEL or really think of myself as "fat" or "old", I'm starting to experience things that indicate I'm fatter and older than I'd like to admit.

Such as...

1) I was asked if i was pregnant. always a winner at the #1 spot. i wasn't terribly upset at the time, but the poor girl who asked me was mortified. it was more of a slow-burn of humiliation. how many other people had wondered the same thing but were too sensible to ask?!?! mental note: do 100 crunches a day
2) Skinny people generally don't HAVE to try on clothes. I used to NEVER try on clothes, unless it was a swimsuit or something like that. If it was a size x and i liked it, it was mine. Now each stupid tshirt needs to be tried on. 'does it make my stomach pooch?', 'does it make my ass look fat?' Puh-leeze. as if the poor factory slaves in southeast asia are deliberately sewing to highlight my gut and booty. they probably look at all the enormous clothes they make for us and think we're giant monsters.
3) I hate to shop. this is a new feeling. i used to love to look at clothes, think about clothes, and occasionally buy clothes. now i hate it. i hate shopping because i have to look at all the sleeveless tops and say, 'oh that woulda been cute about 15 pounds ago'
4) I dread summer. even living in the moderate northwest it gets hot. My summertime staples of sleeveless tops and shorts are loooooong gone. i'm now into capris and flowy tops...all to hide as much of my girth as possible. ugh. i don't even wear shorts to the gym--too much cellulite and jiggly thighs
5) I focus my attention on areas of my body that don't gain weight: nails, shoes and purses. i still stick with my absolute favorites, but i enjoy shoe/purse shopping. manicures and pedicures at my local little vietnam are essential. so far i haven't outgrown those, yet! yippee!
6) i used to buy makeup for fun: lipstick, eyeshadow, whatever. now when i buy makeup i'm more concerned with how it looks with my crows feet, bags under the eyes, forehead wrinkles etc. i never gave a thought to lipstick 'feathering'...you know what that means?!?! it's when the lipstick bleeds into the little tiny wrinkles around your lips. deeeee-lightful! not to worry, there's a product for that. along with the makeup 'primers' i now own to keep the makeup from settling into my 'laugh lines'. i used to need concealer only for zits. now it pretty much goes everywhere. soon i'll be like the old ladies at the walgreens asking for the 'pancake makeup stick'. i'll be trotting around the store with piles of it in my jiggly arms (old-lady 'wings')
7) i'm more interested in ladies magazines like real simple than cosmo. i really don't want to read about jessica biehl's sexy ab workout...tell me how to make rice pudding with ice cream (for reals!!!)
8) i used to say "there'll always be somebody skankier than you" when you go out. now i say "there'll always be somebody older and fatter than you" when I go out....if i ever go out. ho hum. forget skank--i've got the soccer-mom life but without the kids and responsibilities.
9) i find myself calling girls under 30 "little girls"...just like my mama did when i was a kid! "Oh, that little girl at Casual Corner said this blouse will be on sale next week". Replace "casual corner" and "blouse" with "target" and "giant muu muu" and it's exactly the same!!!
10) i have a LOT more understanding of the comic strip Cathy. She was always going on about shoes, dieting, her thighs, her pet and lasagna...no, that was garfield.

ok. gotta get a grip. i'll look back on this ass and age and say 'WTF was i crying about?!?!' just like i do at pictures of me at 25 when i pretty much would have said the same thing....
better go watch tv and eat cereal. just like a 6 year old! :)

UNINTENTIONAL Hoof in Mouth...a downer

ok, so shouting bigoted, uneducated, terribly tasteless comments from my inner-most id has gotten me in trouble plenty of times.
Sadly, my considerable talents in deducing others' most sensitive and painful topics continues. These accidental and completely ignorant outbursts bother me more than any 'hair on your balls' or 'no way, jew' ever will.
i guess i should have more awareness that the women i associate with are often of child-bearing age and with that comes a need to be evermore delicate. not my strong suit.
example number 1: a few months ago my husband's friends were staying with us. they had photos and copious notes about their cat's new litter of kittens. the wife, a complete doll named jenny, is a pediatric nurse and took her job as surrogate co-mommy very very seriously. each kitten had it's every meal, bm and nap lovingly documented...for weeks. after about an hour and a half of listening to her devotion i blurted out, 'jenny, you need to just hurry up and have kids, already!' ha...freakin....ha. she blushed and just muttered something like, 'yeah....anyway, so here's a picture of "fatty" smothering her brothers' or something. as james and i were getting ready to go to sleep, i remarked at jenny's obvious baby fever and james informed me that they HAD been trying for some time to conceive and after months of frustration they'd decided to relocate across the country so jenny's husband john could take a job where invitro fertilization was covered by insurance. holy crap!!!!! i had no idea! this little tidbit could have saved me and poor jenny a lot of embarassment and pain! he coulda/shoulda mentioned it!!!!! he's clueless.

example number 2: last night (oh yes, it's so fresh i can still taste the tang of shame)i was with some colleages out in the boise metro area. i mentioned that one of my friends had decided the financial hardships of attempting IVF were beyond their means. i went on to blurt (love me some blurting) that it was more common than not that women i knew had trouble conceiving...blah, blah, blah. Well, come to find out (after 2 bottles of wine poolside at the holiday inn) that one of my colleauges had miscarried at 14 weeks and this week would have been her due date. OOOOOOOOUUUUUUCCCCCCHHHHHH!!!! between that and the red wine headache, i couldn't sleep. i kept replaying everything i'd said during our trip about babies. poor girl!!!

i wish i could say that i vow to never blurt out anything that could be painful, but i can't. if only i could use my uncanny talents at intuiting pain for good and not evil.
:(
feeling sad and very very insensitive.

could be worse. i coulda gone on a racist tirade about Katrina-victims over a huge family thanksgiving dinner like my aunt. guess loose tongues and bad judgment run in our family.

hoof in mouth disease

omg!!! how many times do i need to insert my dang-old foot in my mouth before i learn to self-edit before speaking?!?!?!
holy moly!
of course, my most famous example of accidentally saying the wrong thing was in college...probably my last month of college. i had become friends with a sweet gal named natalie, who was jewish. she happened to live with her sister marci and her dog maggie. after spending some time at her place studying, i was on my way out when little dog maggie made for the door. now. this was spring of 1994, things were different then...i meant to say either (1) "no way, G" as heard in 'New Jack City' or (2) "no way, dude" as heard in...well everywhere. my stupid brain decided to combine the two and say: "no way, jew!" after an awkward 'ok, gotta go', i made my exit. ooooooppppppsss!! felt like a total dork and semi-anti.semite for a while there.

my uncanny ability to say (and do) the wrong thing continues. just recently i went to lunch with a few of my colleauges: 2 people from washington d.c. who are muckety-mucks in Early Childhood Education, my former boss lilli (with a masters in early childhood education), and my current boss diane who taught early childhood education for many years. after about an hour of calm, uneventful dining the conversation turned to 'why the town of milton-freewater, oregon has adopted frogs as their mascot'. well, i coulda/shoulda kept my ignorant ass quiet. instead i piped up that somebody had tried to explain the connection but that it was a "....RETARDED" explanation. as valid as my assessment had been, the word 'retarded' is clearly as anit-PC or appropriate as possible. Once I had articulated the 'ret' part, i was stuck. the only thing worse than screaming 'retarded' to a table-ful of early educators (2 of whom have children with special needs--oh yeah, i was squirming) is trying to turn 'retarded' into a more socially and developmentally acceptable word. i ended up with 'ridiculous' but it was after crucial moments of stammering and sweating. if i last a year in my new position as 'education specialist' (i.e. goddess of educational practices in our organization) it will be a miracle.
ugh.

oh, did i mention that my 75+ year old great aunt heard/saw me say 'it'll put hair on your balls' just hours after my grandmother (her sister) died?!?!?! i'm horrible.
i truly don't mean any harm. i just have no internal censor.
where's my fundraiser?!

aller-frickin-gies!!!

uh...mah...gawd!!!!!
i am a wreck from these dang allergies!! when i was younger i used to look down on people who were weak and sickly because of allergies (came from my dad who used to make fun of high school boyfriend ralph and his many allergies). i just thought it was something that wusses complained about. karma's a bee-atch!
when i first moved to oregon, all the transplants said that it would take a few years to develop allergies. what they failed to mention was that instead of getting used to it, your body seems to get worse and worse! i've been here over 7 years now (OMG time flies!) and it's worse this year than ever before!!
i take a claritin in the morning (it's supposed to be 12 hours) and by the afternoon i'm sneezing with snot running down my face. great. i've been self-medicating with cheap red wine, but that just makes me sweat....while sneezing with snot running down my face. i'm a freakin delight! i have kleenex at every stage of use (clean, a little used, used, VERY used) in all my jackets and pockets. guh-ross!
i went to a scrapping function* the other night and the lady offered my a claritin. how mentally challenged am i that i never thought of taking a 2nd dang pill!?!?! holla! i ended up needing another one a few hours later, but the point was made.
i'm now that loser that has a NASAL spray (nasonex) in her purse at all times. i haven't used it, but knowing it's there seems to make me feel better. i reckon i'm afraid to use the nasal sprays because (1) in spanish it's pronounced "espr-eye" which is weird to say (remarkable how often i speak spanish during the day) and (2) it reminds me of my freshman year band director.
Mr. Vanlandingham was an obese gentleman who every couple of minutes or so would whip out his nasal spray and go to work. it was just a quick 'spritz-spritz', but it certainly made an impact. i've always heard it's addictive, but dang. there are way sexier addictions!
i'm also afraid i'm becoming one of them 'mouth-breathers'. those people always grossed me out, but i find myself able to only breathe comfortably through my mouth. eww.
i hate to say it, but i blame my itchy eyes 100% on my angel-kitty beso. thank goodness for james' allergy visine. isn't it amazing how white your eyes can be with visine?! holy moly!

lord help me if my nightly glass(es) of wine are contributing to my allergies. i guess i'll just have to wear a bib and mop my eyes/nose with it...

*the scrapping function was held at the home of a woman who hooked me up with the online scrapping thing i've tried to do. she and her husband adopted 2 babies from china and are all into the adopted-chinese-girls community in portland. the other ladies there had also adopted babies...one from china and one from bulgaria. they were also elementary teachers!! it was nice to chat with them, but it was better to get home and do my work without Barney singing in the background.

Lawd, i live in craka-town

So this happened a few days ago but it's still with me...
I was driving home through our neighborhood on the side-streets and I saw something horrendous.
See, I live in an "up and coming" part of Portland....(realtors use that phrase for crap-neighborhoods). At the nearest intersection there's a convenience store, a tire store, a mom-and-pop head shop/Meth-supply store and an abandoned teacher supply store. Only there can you find a selection of 20 different kinds of gloves as well as cleaning fluids. Before that it was a "gentleman's juice bar" called the "420 Club"...delightful.
Yes, a meth house was raided and boarded up down the street...yes, a television was found on the sidewalk across the street from our house (its screen 'tagged' within a few hours), yes our new neighbors apparently don't believe in paying to have trash service, so they pile it up in their driveway (at least they removed the toilet from the backyard the previous owners had out there) and no, we have no plans to move anytime soon. Such is the state of housing prices in Portland.

ANYWAY...I was driving home and I noticed a little boy (probably about 7 or 8) standing on the steps in front of his house looking up at his mom and grandmother (like many homes in the area, the front yard is a steep hill, so there are steps from the street to the front door). As soon as my mind was able to process the thought that "oh, isn't that just darling? A child and his female kin enjoying spring at dusk" I realized that "grandma" was laughing....at the child.....who was PEEING onto the steps above him!!!!!!

WTF?!?!?!? Where do I even begin?!
Do I start with granny who's reinforcing this abyssmal behavior by laughing? Or maybe with the limited intellectual abilities of a child who pees UPSTAIRS...clearly having no idea of the law of gravity. Or the hideous thought that the ease with which the participants perform indicates this is a common ocurrence. OR, perhaps the most disturbing of all....if I ever have children and send them to school in this area....these are the idiots who could be my future child's friend/bully!! Makes me rethink (1) having children (2) homeschooling

I've seen numerous Super Nanny programs where the boys leak outside.
I pray for a girl.

yo humps!

HA! Thanks, Sara for turning me on to the Alanis version of 'My Humps'!!
LOVE IT!
The Black Eyed Peas version is just ridiculous, but I love how Alanis kept all the goofy stuff--the dude doing an invisible rubik's cube (!), the fergie hairdon't, and the schlubby guys dancing around her. However, when she's on the floor crying...OMG. GENIUS!!!!
I've never been a big Alanis fan, but this may have just converted me!!
Lord, that Fergie is annoying. She's the absolute definition of a bruiser! Ugh...she is ROUGH!

i hate tori amos

(just one more thing before i head out)
i had an unusually wild hair a while back and put ‘cornflake girl’ by tori amos on my ipod. I swear I musta been on crack. Each time it comes up on shuffle, I’m mystified.
For the most part I hate : female vocalists, piano music, hippy music that drones on and on and music that talks about fairies and magic. This girl violates so many of my rules that I don’t know how I ever sought out that dang song! Maybe I have that disorder where I do weird stuff in my sleep, but instead of trying to kill my husband or eating an entire turkey I download crap songs by pretentious redheads.

check this s#%@!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUZdDgxiNuE




From Wikipedia (referring to her album “Beekeeper”) "…Amos was conceptually influenced by the ancient art of beekeeping, which she considered a source of female inspiration and empowerment. Through extensive study, Amos also wove in the stories of the Gnostic gospels and the removal of women from a position of power within the Christian church to create an album based largely on religion and politics. Many fans and critics, however, have argued that the concept is unclear and confusing.”

Um. Duh. That woman’s a total nutter! Good thing this music career of hers has panned out, otherwise she’d be living in a group home talking to the walls about bees, the Gnostic gospels and raisin vs. cornflake girls. Makes me TIRED.

Another of my more inspired Ipod selections is “Show Me Love” by Robin S. Now that s@#* is all about female inspiration and empowerment…and it makes me wanna dance. Unlike that cornflake song…that’s just f-ed up.

love me, love my sticky fingers

So I’ve decided to try to think of something ‘bloggable’ each day. As |’ve previously said about scrapbooking: “if it ain’t worth scrapping, it ain’t worth doing”. I’ll try to do the same with blogging.

So you get the picture that I’m a ‘scrapper’…despite sounding tough and “xtreme”, it’s actually a supremely nerdy hobby. It’s great for holy rollers, shut-ins and MILFs (if you take out the ILF part). You get to sit on your ass all day and glue pictures of your kids in Halloween costumes. At the end of the process you have marvelously detailed books documenting your life…while you’ve spent most of it hunched over piles of cardstock (NEVER call it ‘paper’) and hording scraps of ribbon and adhesive (NEVER call it ‘glue’).

As I don’t have children and due do the fact that I’m not a holy roller*, my scrapbooks are limited to trips, my family/friends, and of course, my cat. This is every bit as fascinating as it sounds. My cat’s first doctor visit and haircut are lovingly scrapped as well as her first ‘birthday’ (the anniversary of when she was adopted) and the kitty ‘shower’ I threw for myself before she was adopted. I know it all sounds pathetic and sad, but frankly…I don’t curr (dirty-south for ‘care’ of course). At least I don’t have “Cathy” comics pasted to my computer screen at work!

More later. I gotta get home and scrap. I heard about a scrapbook sidewalk sale in a nearby suburb! Holla!
-c

(*tangent alert: so after I’d just started working at this horrible software company in 2000 I went to happy hour with some of my new colleagues—at a tiki bar across the street from motels for bus drivers and their….um…”new friends”—and was asked “are you a holy roller?” after having not been asked a single question all evening. I answered, “oh hell no!”, but I always wondered what the appropriate response would have been if I had, in fact, been a ‘holy roller’…who hangs out at tiki bars in sketchy parts of town)

Here we go!

Thanks, Sara, for hooking me up! Let's see what kind of nonsense I can get myself into.
Don't expect much, though! :))

It's ON!

Let's go smarty britches!! You have far too much to say to keep that pie hole shut away from the internet.
Let us all revel in your gift of wit.
Git 'er done.