Lyrically Me

“But of all these friends and lovers
There is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new…”
-The Beatles

The second fifty. Amazingly enough, this was actually way easier than I thought it would be and I am already kicking myself for leaving things off the list and “Why didn’t I think of that first?” - this has been a good exercise because I’ve been such a moody little bitch lately, but so much of these things that tumbled in my brain brought this huge smile to my face and I know that I have been so blessed to have all these little moments and to know all these amazing people.

Enough of my being a cheesy-ass. Just sit back and read the second half. Then, because I’ve been totally random for two days, leave me some random comment (I.e. Cheetos should be the fifth food group). TGIF…

51. My kid’s first day of kindergarten
52. My first parent-teacher conference for my daughter
53. Having to go to a bar in Hawaii to watch the finale of the first season of Survivor (Richard won)
54. When my mother finally kicked her alcoholic husband out
55. The first time a boy told me he loved me
56. The second time a boy told me he loved me
57. My first pair of thong underwear
58. Hearing Sarah McLachlan sing “Hold On” live in concert - I love that song
59. Breaking ground on the addition for our home
60. Turning cartwheels in the yard with my kids
61. Watching my daughter on stage in a dance recital
62. Re-losing my virginity, consensually
63. Eating cheesecake at my cousin’s wedding in Virginia
64. Making potstickers from scratch
65. When “my” team won the Stanley Cup
66. Winning a bottle of champagne on the flight to Hawaii on my honeymoon
67. Graduating college
68. Shannon’s “Meet Two People” rule for college parties - no wallflowers allowed!
69. Drinking bad red wine and eating Papa John’s pizza with Zanne.
70. Driving home two hours after a concert with a good friend and walking through campus in the early hours back to my dorm
71. My best friend’s toast at my wedding
72. Hearing random songs from the 80s while eating lunch at a bar in Cleveland with my husband on our vacation get away to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
73. Watching my husband do really bad karaoke, dancing with a candle in his hand and then spilling candlewax all over his pants
74. The argument with RTG where I broke from her expectations of me and realized that the friendship was one-sided and relieved myself of it
75. Lattes with Ange downtown
76. Writing songs with my college roommate and singing two part harmonies
77. When a special guy told me a song reminded him of me
78. Getting a much deserved promotion
79. Phone sex
80. Captaining a Relay for Life team and walking 16 miles in less than 24 hours for my team
81. The wedding music my dad wrote for me
82. Coincidentally being in San Francisco at the same time as a friend from high school, and meeting in the city, so far away from our home
83. Riding the BART with him after a day wandering the streets of the City
84. B giving me the Journey cassette tape, telling me to hit play, and having “Open Arms” be the song waiting for me
85. Sleeping in fresh sheets the day they have been changed
86. Margarita pedicures at the spa
87. Drinking a cappuccino and reading a good book in the blissful quiet
88. Spending hours wandering around Barnes & Noble, not looking for anything specific
89. Playing and replaying a voice mail just to hear the voice again…and again.
90. Smelling the cologne of the person you love when they aren’t with you, and feeling close.
91. In the car while a boy was driving too fast - radio blaring, windows rolled down
92. “You make me want to be a better man.”
93. Taking my daughter to her first concert (Hannah Montana) and seeing how excited she got
94. The feeling of successfully wrapping up a huge project
95. Eating an elephant ear at the county fair
96. The exhilaration of the big drop after the first hill on the Millenium Force roller coaster at Cedar Point
97. Seeing my name published in several of my favorite magazines (an interview, a letter to the editor, and a response to the reader question)
98. Having a boy sing “Wonderful Tonight” to me in the sweetest voice
99. Singing while my dad plays the piano
100. And 10001 other moments that I have no room to list and that haven’t happened yet.

“All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I’ve loved them all…”
-The Beatles

The other day, Melanie wrote a post about 100 things worth doing (volume 1). If your life was to flash before your eyes, which memories would you like to see.

Of course, I’ve never met a MeMe I didn’t like (Oh no, I take that back, there was one once that I got on MySpace that was all about sex and I didn’t fill it out because I didn’t figure my sister, stepbrother and cousins needed to know whether or not I like to have my hair pulled), so I decided I would sit down and try to tackle this one.

In no particular order….

1. Getting my acceptance letter to [Major University].
2. Moving into the dorm for my freshman year of college
3. Basket tossing one of my squad mates during my high school cheerleading days
4. Going to my first hockey game
5. Finding out via my amnio that I was having a baby girl
6. Finding out via 3D ultrasound that I was having another little girl
7. Hearing the song “Unfold” by Marié Digby for the first time and having it resonate to the core of my being
8. The first time I did 100 pushups
9. The first time I went driving alone after I got my drivers license, jamming to Nirvana’s Nevermind (on a cassette tape!)
10. The first time I hailed a taxi cab
11. Walking through the streets of Chicago alone
12. Driving home from Keesler AFB in Biloxi with my now husband after he proposed to me, staring at my new ring the whole way
13. Getting kissed under “The Arch” at [Major University], which according to superstition meant you’d spend the rest of your life with that person (I didn’t, haven’t talked to him in years)
14. Buying our first house together
15. Selling our first house together
16. My short labor for my oldest daughter and falling in love with her immediately, even though she looked like a conehead
17. Being relieved when two hours later, her head was a normal shape and not freakish anymore
18. My labor for my youngest, watching a rerun of Mork & Mindy
19. Transferring colleges after two years because I needed a better fit, despite the prestige of my first university
20. The night my husband and I got together (nearly 11 years ago) when we ran into each other at a party
21. The night I met my friend M at a party, he walked me home and we sat in the lobby of my dorm until five a.m. talking
22. Seeing “RENT” onstage for the first (second, third, fourth) time
23. Receiving excellent feedback on my poetry in writing class
24. Watching my oldest daughter ride her bike for the first time
25. When the youngest tells me she loves me with “her whole heart” just like I say to her
26. On my wedding day when my husband smashed cake in my face and it fell down my dress and got stuck between my boobs
27. Going to a bonfire after our wedding because we weren’t ready for the party to be over
28. Blow job shots on my 21st birthday
29. Going to a bar and staying on the dance floor all night
30. The hours spent with my friend, talking, kissing - so many years ago - one of those nights to never forget
31. Cruising with my friend A listening to Pearl Jam’s “Ten”
32. The weekend spent at the DTD frat house - just us two girls among all the guys on the all-male campus
33. “Only yellow bellied subhuman scum break up with someone on the phone.”
34. Visiting my BFF in the hospital after her oldest daughter was born
35. “I think I love you.”
36. Greasy deep dish at Gino’s
37. Going to the city when I was a kid, feeling so cool drinking a Shirley Temple
38. Throwing a dozen roses out my window
39. Realizing I didn’t have to “put up with” anything and moving on with no regrets
40. Giving up on the concept of regrets and just living life
41. Getting hammered on vodka and cranberries with my husband on vacation in Fort Lauderdale when a dance club had ladies night
42. Swimming with the dolphins in the Bahamas
43. Swimming with the dolphins in Hawaii
44. The USS Arizona Memorial
45. Buying my first brand new car (It was a Saturn, by the way, which I drove until my husband totaled it)
46. The day I found out I was pregnant for my oldest
47. My first decent paycheck
48. Getting my first “real job” out of college
49. The day we wrote the last check to pay off my student loans
50. Baking monkey bread with my kids on Christmas Eve.

Whooooo. Fifty. Take a minute and stretch. The next fifty to follow whenever I finish my mental jog down memory lane. In the mean time, share some of yours…

“I see perfect little lives
Watch the shadows of the clouds
And the surface of the ocean out the window of a plane
I get nervous when I fly
I’m used to walking with my feet
Turbulence is like a sigh that I can’t help but overthink…”
-Jack Johnson

 I’ve never been one who has recurring dreams - I don’t think that I do. I know someone who has a recurring dream of all her teeth falling out (and according to dream analysis, that’s supposed to be a good sign, I guess). The only common theme to dreams that I have is the dream that I’m in a plane and it’s crashing.

And then I wake up.

I had the dream again the other night - for some reason, I was on a plane coming home from Hong Kong (I don’t know why the hell I was in Hong  Kong, but there I was boarding a plane… home from Hong Kong). The plane was aloft and then the next thing I knew, it was speeding towards the ground - not straight down, though. It was speeding as though it was landing really quickly, too quickly, and there was no land beneath it.

And then I woke up.

I can’t even begin to describe how much I hate dreams like these. I think it’s partly because I can’t help but recall such dreams when I am actually on a plane. Fortunately, that’s not too often. Yes, I’m aware that it’s safer to fly in a plane than drive in a car - but it’s the control freak in me that panics being on a plane because I am totally at someone else’s mercy, and I can cling to my armrest with all that I have, and it doesn’t do shit.

Yet, I’m completely aware that I could get totally t-boned out of nowhere while driving my car no matter how well I’m driving and have absolutely no control over that. So my logic is somewhat flawed when I say it’s a control thing.

I guess it’s also a not wanting to plummet to my death from 35,000 feet thing too.

I actually didn’t mind travelling before kids. Once my oldest was born, though, being on a plane reminded me that if something should happen to me while I was on that plane, she was going to be raised by my husband…alone… without me. And sorry, but that just scares the everloving shit out of me. My husband is a good dad in small doses. He’s easily overwhelmed by the kids, he is overwhelmed by all the things that need to be done for child maintenance (oh, bathing? They need to have baths? Really?). I step foot on a plane and all I can think of is my poor motherless filthy children running amok while my husband buries his head in the couch cushions wondering how many nights in a row he can serve Macaroni and Cheese for dinner and if the filling in PopTarts counts as a serving of fruit.

No wonder I break out into a cold sweat at the slightest hint of turbulence.

My last time on a plane was when I was pregnant for my youngest. I boarded the plane, and it wasn’t long before we hit turbulence and I got this deer in the headlights look on my face - it was so pale and freaked out, the flight attendant stopped by to see if I was okay. I wasn’t. She even sat down with me to talk to me to distract me. She offered me a drink, then a Valium. Of course, being all big and knocked up, I couldn’t have either. I meekly sipped some water while trying to take deep cleansing breaths.

Still panicked and the poor flight attendant had to get back to attending the flight, and she was still somewhat worried for me, so she found an off duty pilot on the plane (how does one just randomly find an off-duty pilot? I don’t know, but she did). He was awesome, came to sit next to me and explained to me the physics of flight.

And it was good.

I know it’s crazy. I know it’s irrational. But it’s me, one hundred percent. Anyone else have any goofy irrational fears they wish to share to make me feel like less of an asshat?

“You wanna see the other side
What’s going on behind the eyes
Still it seems if you can’t trust
You can’t be trusted…”
-Ben Folds

Lately I’ve been reading a lot of things in magazines, on the internet (blogs, message boards and the like), and hearing about incidents in real life where in a relationship one spouse or other is not trusting of the other and is checking up on them in ways that I’m going to call shady. I’m talking things like logging into your significant other’s MySpace account or email account to read email messages, or perhaps cracking the code to his voice mail and listening to all his messages (I do know someone who has done this, and she is apparently rather proud of herself). Opening mail. Digging through his or her drawers. Reading his or her journal.

And all I can say to that is… ICK.

When I was younger, I was probably a bit more of a jealous person than I am now - though, that wouldn’t be too difficult because I find now that I’m not at all jealous. In my younger years, my jealousy probably came from a fear of abandonment - not wanting to be alone, thinking I couldn’t survive on my own, thinking I needed someone to take care of me. The older I get the more self-sufficient I become and the more I realize that I can take care of myself and my kids just fine - and I’m not afraid of being alone - so I’m not going to worry about something that may happen, because if it does it does and I’ll deal with it, but I will just hope it doesn’t.

Snooping is something that has always bugged the shit out of me because my mom used to do it. One time when I was younger, I went away for the summer and she went through a box of my writing when I was gone - and some of it was personal stuff. I was mortified when it came up in conversation - I was also extremely pissed off. I prefer to choose when and who I open myself up to - and to have that choice taken from me, well, it irritated me to no end. It also made me more guarded at home, and frankly, I remain that way to this day - guarded around my family.

I don’t believe spying on your Man or Woman is a great preventative mechanism to keep them honest. I also don’t feel that I could be with a person who felt the need to spy on me. I think finding that someone was reading my email or hacking my MySpace would annoy the shit out of me, and I know that someone who felt the need to check and double check my every move is probably someone I wouldn’t want to be with. The lack of trust speaks more to their issues than anything to do with me, and, well… that could possibly be the point of “too much issues” in my opinion.

Does my husband spy on me? No, he doesn’t (and I don’t think his computer illiteracy has anything to do with it). Do I spy on him? No and I have no desire to start. Someone once said to me about checking on your partner: “If I have to dig for it, it’s information I don’t want to know.”

I wonder sometimes if I’m just a particularly liberal lackadaisical “whatever will be, will be” kind of gal. How do you feel about spying? Do you do it? Do you think your significant other does it? Do you trust your partner? Do you think they trust you? If you’re not currently in a relationship, have you ever been one who snoops? Been snooped on? I guess I’m curious how common it is…

“Yeah, that’s nice right? Well, it doesn’t exist ok. Look at the hair. The hair is long, it’s flowing, it’s like a river. Well, it’s a fucking weave, okay? And the tits, please! I could hang my overcoat on them. Tits by design were invented to be suckled by babies. Yes, they’re purely functional. These are silicon city. And look, my favorite, the shaved pubis. Pubic hair being so unruly and all. Very key. This is a mockery, this is a sham, this is bullshit. Implants, collagen, plastic, capped teeth, the fat sucked out, the hair extended, the nose fixed, the bush shaved… These are not real women, all right? They’re beauty freaks. And they make all us normal women with our wrinkles, our puckered boobs, hi Bob, and our cellulite feel somehow inadequate. Well I don’t buy it, all right? But you fucking mooks, if you think that if there’s a chance in hell that you’ll end up with one of these women, you don’t give us real women anything approaching a commitment. It’s pathetic. I don’t know what you think you’re going to do. You’re going to end up eighty-years old, drooling in some nursing home, then you’re going to decide, it’s time to settle down, get married, have kids? What, are you going to find a cheerleader?”
-Gina (Rosie O’Donnell)

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about appearance. Maybe it’s because I’ve had myself under such intense scrutiny due to the excess few pounds (I’m being generous to myself and calling it a “few pounds” rather than what it is because I really need to stop thinking about it) brought to me courtesy of my Lameass Thyroid™.

I have never been the kind of person who walks around thinking she is all that. Oddly enough, the older I get, the more “all that” I think I am. I don’t know if that is a comfort in my skin that comes with age, or the realization that over the years I have been much harder on myself than I should have ever been. When I look at pictures of myself from years gone by, I am stunned the amount of time that I have spent obsessing about my appearance. I see these pictures and I see a wide vibrant smile, I see a body that certainly didn’t deserve the hatred I extended towards it.

A friend of mine blames my intense body scrutiny on the media and (I’m quoting here) “Paris fucking Hilton”. I told him, that’s not the case with me. I’ve never felt like I had to compare to the Paris Hiltons of the world (and I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit - Paris? Yuck). I’ve never held celebrities up as the ideal that I had to reach. It’s not real - thanks to the miracle of Photoshop and editing, who knows what they really look like anyway.

I am the way I am because I grew up under watchful and critical eyes. My mother would never have dared to tell me to lose weight, or that I was chubby, but my grandmother sure didn’t mind making it known if I was a bit thicker than I should be and my stepmother told me at one point, “If you just never gain another pound, you’ll be fine.” (Ironically, I was 110 at the time and years later, when I got down to 117 pounds, she was the first one to say, “You’re too thin. I think you need to gain weight.” Really? Because according to your earlier assessment, I’m still up seven pounds).

 I think the hardest thing about this stupid weight gain is the lack of control I’ve had over it - and I admit, I’m a control freak to the nth degree. I work out and eat healthfully and still it hit me - and so in addition to the medication the doctor prescribed, I’ve changed up my workout, and I’ve been even more conscious of what I am eating (no, I didn’t think it was possible to be even more conscious, but I have been and it’s not been fun). Today, my size 2 jeans slid right on with no problem and it’s sad that that is a huge boost to my mood and how I’m feeling.

I won’t pretend that these issues are even close to being endearing qualities of mine. I don’t want to care so much - but it’s not easy to change over twenty years of being this way. My one venture into therapy matched me up with a therapist who asked me to describe my mood in colors (”Oh yes, I’m feeling like a purple sparkly cape with a brown hat.”). Seriously. I tried to get on board with it, but just felt so ridiculous about the whole process and once it came out that I had been date raped, the counselor refused to look any further, because it was obvious that THAT was the root of my control issues. It was like she had hit the bullseye and refused to help me look further into the whys. Never mind that I have had self esteem and control issues long before that happened and even now, when I can barely remember the details of what happened to me that night, I still have issues.

It is what it is, I suppose. As I get older, these things don’t seem to be going away, but they are less of a controlling factor than they once were. Though I am still ruled by a lot of these things, it is less, and I guess at this point, I’ll take any bit of progress I can get.

“Mother mother, Can you hear me?
Sure I’m sober, sure I’m sane
Life is perfect, never better
Still your daughter, still the same…”
-Tracy Bonham

Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms. To all you people who have moms, give your mom a big hug, particularly if your mother has a harrowing birth story to tell about the day you came into the world (like barely making it to the hospital and nearly giving birth in the elevator, or in my case giving birth two times with no epidural or pain medication - I’m so badass). If your mother never told you, her body was never the same after she had you - and she might have told you that it was all worth it, but I’m here to tell you that there is no woman in the world who seriously loves her stretch marks, and that badge of honor shit? Ugh. Well, I’m not that woman anyway, and my kids can thank their lucky stars that I didn’t get stretch marks through either pregnancy because there would be hell to pay and I would expect some freakin’ awesome Mother’s Day gifts if motherhood had cost me stretch marks (I’m half-kidding).

As I type this, I’m listening to Maroon 5’s, “Makes Me Wonder”. I am going to see them in concert this summer (only because they are touring with the Counting Crows) and thought I better familiarize myself with some of their music so that I wouldn’t fall asleep during that portion of the concert. I saw Maroon 5 on American Idol the other night and was shocked by two things: 1) Adam Levine? Needs a cheeseburger. 2) Adam Levine didn’t know shit about his summer concert tour and didn’t do jack to promote it. Hey, PR Person? Get with Adam. Tell him who he’s touring with and where he’s going. Seriously.

What a week it’s been.

Last night, instead of kicking back with a movie as I’d originally planned (I couldn’t decide between “The Departed” and “The Good Shepherd” - both seemed too heavy and I wasn’t sure which was going to trip my trigger - though both have Matt Damon, so who really cares, right?), we kicked back and watched the Stanley Cup playoffs. I love hockey. I think we made the right viewing choice.

I always check the search terms people use to find my blog - because sometimes it’s pretty interesting. Today, I got five hits to the “Just a Guy” post using the search phrase “women drive men away”. Niiiiice. That beats the time someone searched the phrase “video of man fucking pregnant wife” - because a) no, there is no such thing here, and b) gross.

This morning, my kids have given me awesome gifts. The school creations included a little flower pot with fake flowers (which I know my two year old played no part in creating, but man is she so proud of it), and a card with my five-year-old’s handprints and a handwritten coupon that she wrote offering me breakfast in bed. She tells me that she makes fantastic toast, so… Then they gifted me with scratch off lottery tickets (I won $18 - some of which will be used for a humongo cappuccino very shortly…), an iTunes gift card (whooo), and a bag of beef jerky (which sounds silly, but I love beef jerky, so you can’t go wrong with dehydrated meat). We’ll be heading out to lunch to celebreate moi, and that will be fun. I’ve kind of let my husband be Mr. Super Dad today while I’ve worked out (while watching Sex and the City on DVD and drooling over John Corbett), taken a super long shower, and catching up on my games of Scrabulous.

I’m off to finish getting ready to go out with the family - some errands (COFFEE!) to do before we hit lunch, as it’s still pretty early. It’s cloudy and blah outside, but my kids are bringing the sun.

“My tea’s gone cold, I’m wondering why I
got out of bed at all
Morning rain clouds up my window
I can’t see at all
Even if I could it’d all be grey
But your picture on my wall
It reminds me, that it’s not so bad,
It’s not so bad…”
-Dido

This morning came far too early. I decided at some point last night to make a big pretty pink drink fortified with much Absolut to take the edge off the week and instead managed to take the edge off my common sense. Fortunately for you all, I didn’t attempt to BUI (Blog Under the Influence) - though I did do some altered IM’ing and ill-advised emailing, as well as skanky Scrabulous (yes, I managed to use the words sexual AND vagina yesterday - though I think “sexual” came well before the drinks were poured). I don’t drink much, which is why it doesn’t take much to turn my mind to mush.

I woke up with my youngest kid before 6 a.m. today - so I spent the morning completely dragging ass. My husband, on the other hand, slept in for another 90 minutes or so after I got up, and then quickly went out for a run. I was a little dead on my feet, but scraped myself off the couch in time to go for a walk once he got home and changed clothes to take the girls out for donuts.

Forty-five minutes in the fresh air with the headphones on did a lot to pep me up, until I got home and my husband was in one of those moods - the kind where you don’t have to say anything, the look on your face speaks volumes and it is speaking in expletives. I asked what was up, and got the, “Who says something is up?” response. (Note: I hate this response - it’s obvious something is wrong. Spit it out). Then I asked, “Are the girls driving you nuts?” Silence. Then, “They won’t stop talking!”  Um, yeah, they are KIDS. Kids talk. A lot. Non stop. About nothing and about everything. In their indoor voices and at top volume. I mean, kids are kids - deal.

After another hour of huffy-puffy, stompy, pissy mood, I said to him, “I don’t know who pissed in your cornflakes this morning, but it wasn’t me, so snap out of it.”

Then I went to hang with my kids.

And he did indeed snap out of it.

Some days with my kids can drive me up the wall, but I know that I am so totally blessed to have them in my life. My youngest daughter is this cuddly-pie of a kid - not a waking hour goes by when she’s not hugging, kissing, licking or doing something to show me affection. She likes to be held, likes to curl up in my lap. She likes to say, “I’m the baby puppy and you are the mama puppy,” and then she hangs her tongue out of her mouth and pants like a dog.

My oldest kid is so super smart - she likes to draw me pictures and write me notes that tell me she loves me or she talks about her WebKinz. She likes to play on the computer and she likes to dance and change her clothes a hundred times a day. She can get this crazy attitude, but sometimes if I’m down and not doing well, she covers me with a blanket, pats my head and gives me a kiss on the cheek.

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day. The girls are with their dad right now shopping (he says they are shopping for landscaping stuff for the yard, but who knows - I wasn’t invited on this trip, so maybe they are shopping for me?). Both kids are hiding presents for me that they made in school/daycare. I love that shit. I love the handmade stuff with handprints, or pictures. I love that my oldest asked me if I ever went digging in her underwear drawer and when I said no, she said, “Well don’t start until after Sunday because that’s where I’m hiding your present!”

Being a mom is often a huge source of my stress, but it is also one of the greatest privileges of my life, and one that I’m so taken with. My kids love me in a way that no one else can or ever will love me and for that I am so grateful and smitten by my little goobers.

“Looking in your eyes
Looking in your big brown eyes…”
-Inner Circle

A few weeks ago, my husband and I were at dinner at Carrabba’s chilling over some bread and a vat of olive oil and trying to have some conversation. He was talking about CDs he had brought in to his office to listen to - he tends to put headphones on when he doesn’t want to talk to his co-workers, and he jams to music - usually shit I wouldn’t listen to (Our taste in music is so supremely different from each other - I would never listen to Weird Al for serious, or even for mocking - just not my thing). He was saying how one of his coworkers was giving him shit for listening to, I want to say Bon Jovi, and loudly singing along.

One thing you must know about my husband: he is a horrible singer. He’s also a very loud one. I can imagine that he was driving his coworkers bonkers. One woman asked if I could have him bring in something different to listen to. I pledged to not get involved - whatever, it’s not my ears having to hear it.

My husband decided to take in one of my CDs of dance remixes and pop stuff. On it was the song “Sweat” (aka “A la la la la long, a la la la la long long li long long long”). My husband was telling me at dinner that the song came on and he was listening to it, and he had a revelation about the song.

“Oh yeah?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he replied.

“Do tell…”

He leaned across the table and in a stage whisper told me: “It’s about anal sex.”

“Noooooooooooooo!” I protested. I couldn’t remember the lyrics offhand, but I didn’t really think so.

“Oh yeah! Looking in your big brown eyes…” (Eyes? Plural? Really? Dude).

He argued for about five minutes about why he was sure the song was all about getting it up-the-butt. I argued for just as long that I really thought maybe he was kinda sorta reading too much into it. The song does have sexual overtones, of that there is no doubt… but, I really think the singer was talking about her eyes-eyes and not her ass. I’m looking at the lyrics now thinking, well… sex, absolutely. But anal sex? Eeesh - I really just don’t know that that woulda gotten that kind of radio time.

But I could be wrong.

The convo was crazy making, but it cemented why, even with my love of music, I just should not talk about music with my husband.

“Sometimes when I’m alone I wonder
Is there a spell that I am under
Keeping me from seeing the real thing?”
-Incubus

As I type this, I’m hanging at home alone while my husband is probably consuming liquid refreshment following his softball game. This is the spring/summer Thursday night ritual, not one I mind too much - I kind of like the time at the end of the day - the time between when my kids fall asleep and when I decide to quit running my brain and I finally go to sleep. There are days, like today, where it’s even better to have that time between their bedtime and my bedtime with the rest of the house quiet, with no one to have to talk to and getting to just chill out, play Scrabulous, eat popcorn and zone in front of the television.

I have been kind of a bitch for the past few months (an “emotional wildcard” to borrow a phrase from the comments), and while I know that there are things that have contributed to my bitchiness and things that I’ve perceived in a certain way because frankly, I’m frazzled, worn out and worn down. There have been times along the way that I have felt a certain way about things, and I haven’t known if my head has been far too clouded by other things, or if my perception was indeed the reality.

I’m trying to pay attention to that.

I’m in one of my thinky moods tonight. I don’t know if it’s the multiple Coke Zeros or the fact that I am whacked out on ibuprofen because (remember my drinking game? I’m about to talk about my cycle, so grab a drink and chug it), y’all, I am having some seriously wicked cramps. My husband came home from work in a completely pissed off mood. He’d had a bad day at work. He was here for less than an hour before he checked out to go play softball with the guys, and I headed out to schlep the girls to my oldest’s soccer game. It’s so easy to get resentful and pissed off when he’s going out to play and I’m trying to corral a two year old while comforting the almost six-year-old who got zonked in the eye with an errant soccer ball. Y’all, she wasn’t even looking - they were throwing the ball in! I’m not sure what she was looking at or where she was looking, but had she been looking at the ball, I’m pretty damn sure it wouldn’t have hit her. I’m not unsympathetic - I murmured some words of comfort, but all the same, I don’t even like soccer. This was my husband’s gig. He likes soccer. He wanted her to play. And where was he? Playing softball - just like he will be for her remaining games. Sigh.

I’m trying to roll with it. Trying to not let shit get me down. For the most part, it is what it is. I get upset sometimes about this stuff, and wonder why. I can’t really change the kind of person I am (I can, but I won’t because I’m a stubborn bitch), and I don’t see him changing either. I’m going to do my best to entertain some glass-half-full thoughts for awhile though, see if I can’t “act as if”.

“When you see a deer you see Bambi
And I see antlers up on the wall
When you see a lake you think a picnic
And I see a large mouth up under that log
You’re probably thinking that you’re going to change me
In some ways, well maybe you might
Scrub me down, dress me up but no matter what
I’m still a guy.”
-Brad Paisley

I know I’ve mentioned it a time or two before, but the differences between men and women drive me crazy. I have been told often that men just don’t have that “thing” that makes them get all bent out of shape when the sink is overrun with dishes. I have been told a time or two that men need to be “asked” for help - because they don’t intuitively know what needs to be done.

And a time or two, I hear that and I wanna shake my head and think to myself: “Whaaaaaaaaaaa?”

It’s women telling me this stuff. That’s what boggles me. I have yet to ask men how they feel about this generalization about their gender, if men themselves feel that they don’t notice when there are Cheerios on the floor or the dishwasher has been run and there are clean dishes to put away. Men, if you are reading this, can you answer this? Is this true? Is this just an excuse?

I guess I then wonder, are there any generalizations about women - things that men are putting up with (aside from our menstrual cycles!) and excusing us with the “It’s a woman thing - they can’t help it” excuse. I guess PMS might fall into that category, but really I’m kind of curious.

I don’t know where this comes from tonight. My husband has cleaned both of my daughters’ bedrooms, he finished filling the dishwasher and (gasp!) ran the damn thing, he gave both girls their baths, and I think he mighta even vacuumed. This was after he ran to Subway to pick up a sandwich for me to eat for dinner. I have no complaints today, but, generally, I am not filled with such sunshine.