Huge Loser. Huge.

Help!

Did. Not. TiVo. Survivor.

Am despondent.

One of you has it, yes? And will send it to me?

Stripey

Hi, sorry.

You are dead now.

I just administered a fatal dose of cuteness. For those of you who have developed a tolerance for cuteness and may be desperately clinging to life, here.

Too bad, really. It was nice knowing you all. Mia mourns your passing.

(Now, who wants to use their final burst of strength and make their last action on this planet nagging my husband to finish fixing the damn wall already? Mention how embarassing it is that I have been forced to publish pictures of our bespackled wall on the internet. Tell him Sparky sent you.)

Do you miss me?

All is well here in stayhomevacationland, except that it is supposed to rain buckets for the next two days. Actually, that might be good so that we can get a break from our activities. Yesterday we went to the zoo and then I realized that my front garden was bringing down property values for the entire neighborhood, so I went out and pulled weeds. By the time I was done I had yanked out the entire front yard by hand, so this morning I am off to get grass seed and a massage.

While you are waiting patiently for me to return to my regularly-scheduled blogging, you can lend your brilliance and expertise to a major problem I will be facing in the next few weeks. In fact, anyone who can solve this one should immediately get to work on world peace, as I believe the issues are equally intractable. (For those of you who like to accuse me of being too bookish - as if that were a bad thing - that means "difficult to manage or govern.")

Here's the deal: Wedding. 4:30 wedding. 4:30 garden wedding. On October 7th, in Washington DC, so it could be 80 degrees or 40 degrees or anywhere in between. Keeping in mind that I have no boobs and a formidable (albeit smokin') ass, what the almighty hell do I wear? Discuss.

Mia Monday #35: Busy Sunday Edition

Happy Monday, everybody. We are on vacation this week, so expect things to be a little quiet around here. If you are desperate for Cactus-Fish related material, head over to my other place for a week's worth of posts written by members of my family.

Check out the crib, yo

Hey there, sportsfans. I have a case of the creeping blahs today, so, like, check out my kid.

Boobs!

First, wow, you people have a lot of porn. I don't have any porn and I am starting to feel a little left out.

Second, fine, ok, let's just talk about my boobs and get it over with, and then I think I am going to make it my mission in life to not mention my boobs on the internet for three entire months. I think I can do it, I mean, I used to never write about my boobs. It may be a hard habit to break though, so you will have to keep me honest.

Mia self-weaned a few weeks ago, sadness and woe, hurty leaky boobs making sleeping unpleasant, etc. etc. blah blah blah. Since she stopped nursing, I have noticed some changes. For instance, I no longer eat as much as an entire football team at every meal and my hips/butt combo seems to have shrunk. I don't know what that one has to do with breastfeeding, but I do know that suddenly, I can fit my smokin' ass into Mia's little play chairs.

The other thing is that my boobs are gone. Not that they were ever much to write home about anyway. I had heard all these stories about women who kept their big breastfeeding boobs and other women whose boobs got a lot smaller, so I was curious to see what would happen. At first, I thought I had ended up about where I started, but then I started to think I was maybe a little smaller, and I suppose the truth is that I just don't remember. I mean, it's been nearly two years since I've seen my regular boobs - some of the details have gone a bit blurry.

I asked Chris if he thought my boobs were smaller than they were before I got pregnant, and his mouth said "no" but his eyes said "DANGER! DANGER! MUST NOT BELITTLE THE BOOBS OF THE WOMAN WITH HER KNEE MERE INCHES FROM MY UNPROTECTED GROINAL AREA," so I suspect he may have been lying to me. I'm really curious to know though, just for posterity or something, and it got me to thinking about how I could find out for sure.

This is the part where we talk about the most embarassing thing hidden in the deepest darkest recesses of my closet. Actually, it is the third most embarassing thing. The first two things we have already talked about - my high school yearbook pictures, which I posted, and my huge black binder filled with bad, adolescent poetry and cricket carcasses (and how cool would it be of the plural of 'carcass' was 'carci'). The fact is that I have an excellent resource to determine whether my boobs used to be bigger. In fact, I have photographic (actually, polaroidic) evidence.

Oh come on, like you never. (Well, ok, some of you never, but not all of you.)

I'm not embarassed that the pictures exist (although I have on several occasions tried to determine the best way to destroy them... fire? shredder? warm acid bath?). The thing is that I always blink in pictures, and these are no exception, so not only are they not the type of picture I want to appear on the dust jacket of my first novel, they are just bad pictures to boot. Humiliating. I can't even get naughty polaroids right.

Anyway, I started thinking that I would dig them out and see once and for all if my boobs used to be bigger. And then I realized, I was probably 20 or 21 at the time, and if there is anything I don't need to see at 31, it is myself at 21.

Here endeth the boobage. You should all go index your porn collections, or something. Perverts.

Shy

I had this whole post written about my boobs (what else?), but then I started counting up all the people I know in "real life" who are reading this blog now, and I got a little self-conscious. I don't know why I am more comfortable telling the internet about my boobs than I am telling other people, possibly because the internet is not likely to bring it up the next time we meet for lunch.

Anyway, I will get over myself sooner rather than later, I am sure, and tell you everything you never wanted to know about the current state of my boobs. In the meantime, um, gosh. In the meantime, I have nothing. Apparently we either talk about my boobs or we just don't talk.

I know! And this is even marginally relevant to the (boob) topic at hand. If I came to your house and searched all your closets and drawers and even the closet under the stairs in the basement, what's the most embarassing thing I would find? Oh come, you can tell me. It's just us here, you, me, and the internet at large. Tell me, and then tomorrow I will tell you.

I hate firemen

Saturday afternoon, we started smelling gas in the house. We checked to make sure I hadn't left the gas running on the stove (we will not discuss how often I do that), but everything was turned off. We did locate the worst of the smell behind the stove, so Chris turned off the gas and we opened all the windows and doors to air it out.

Chris and I react to things a little differently. Chris was of the "abandon the house and all of our belongings immediately and move to another state to avoid the gas leak" school of thought, and I was of the "let's wait until we feel tired or sick" school of thought. In hindsight, I probably should have been closer to Chris's school than to my own, but in my defense the smell was not terribly strong, opening the windows helped a great deal, and we were having guests for dinner.

We finally called the gas company and they agreed to send someone out... eventually. When the second fire truck in 10 minutes pulled onto our street, we put that together with the fact that we had been hearing sirens every couple of minutes for hours and I went over to ask the neighbors if they were possibly having a gas problem. They were, and they weren't. Turned out that the gas company had added too much of whatever they add to make the gas stink and it was making people all over the county abandon their homes and call the fire department.

While I was chatting with the neighbors, one of the firemen (yum, firemen) came out and asked if I was smelling gas too. I said yes, so, ahem, four lovely, yummy, lickable firemen came over to check it out. Yup, you heard me, I had four firemen in full fireman regalia in my living room. Sadly, my husband, daughter, and in-laws were also in my living room, so my make-out opportunities were severely limited.

Anyway, they checked the stove, no gas, and then I headed downstairs with Hot Baldy Fireman so he could check the furnace. Hot Baldy Fireman told me to relax, his big wand thing (which he referred to as "the tool," ahem) wasn't detecting any gas. I said, "That's great news, thanks. And I just won a bet with my husband." Hot Baldy Fireman said, "Oh, you had a bet with your husband?" And then he set off the alarms on his tool (ahem). He claimed that as a man, he has to side with the men.

I was very annoyed and officially do not like firemen anymore.

Except, there is still a faint smell of gas in the kitchen, and I am thinking I would be more comfortable if the firemen came back, just to double check...

Mia Monday #34: Swingers Edition

Posted by Beth at 07:30 PM | Comments (30)

What I Learned from the Internet: Episode 8

Hi, I love you. Also, I am finally. finally done, and dude - that was a lot of blogs. If I missed you I'm sorry and please let me know because I had trouble with a couple of sites but will be happy to try again.

Anywho - you know what really chaps my ass? You. You chap my ass. Was it good for you? The thing is, a lot of you said "oh, my blog is so boring" or "oh, my blog sucks" and that really pisses me off. It pisses me off because, if you think your site is awful, why do you do it? I mean sure, blah blah, I write for me, blah blah, but since you are publishing to everyone with an internet connection, you are therefore writing for an audience and if you think you suck you ought to stop.

Who are you trying to impress, anyway? Me? I'm just some chick with a kid and a website and you don't even know where I live or my last name or frankly, that much about me. Trying to impress someone else? Why? Who are they? Nobody you should care about I am almost positive. Does your site bore me? Maybe. But, why do you care? Does it bore you? If it does, then stop. If it doesn't, then stop calling it boring.

And look, I am all for the "say something bad about yourself before somebody beats you to it" thing, in fact, I am a charter member of that club. But if you don't like my website, you can suck it and not read it. And if I don't like yours, the same goes. But please, please, stop knocking yourself down. Because I love you guys, because you keep me sane, because you are my real life friends, because anybody who knocks you down has to answer to me, and because being able to say what you think is a beautiful thing, and none of us should ever apologize for that.

And it takes courage to publish yourself, to put yourself out there, to be open and vulnerable. I admire that in all of you. I want you to admire that in yourselves. I want you to stop apologizing for yourselves. I want you to stop apologizing for yourselves, to stop making excuses, to stop hiding. I have learned over the last week that you are all, every one of you, fabulous and unique and trying, just trying. I'm just trying too.

I've really enjoyed this week. You are all so different, so varied. You are all facing different things, living different lives. I've liked getting to know you a little bit. I like that we are all here together. I like that we are all such different people and still friends. And I want you, yes you, to stop disparaging yourself. And I? Will go first. I rawk.

And so do you. Now own it.

What I Learned from the Internet: Episode 7

Today the internet taught me that I'm not gaining weight, I'm just wearing the wrong pants.

What I Learned from the Internet: Episode 6

Today the internet broke my heart. Alex did it, but she didn't meant to, she thought it would be a good thing.

I hate to even link this, it is that bad.

Oh, fine. Here.

I hate the beard. I'm just not a fan of facial hair on anyone other than young men, and while Clive is a great many exceptional things, he is not a young man. He looks like, I don't know, he should be bringing me an umbrella drink beside some pool somewhere. Which, wait a minute, that would work for me. I mean, as long as he shaved.

I dunno, you guys, I think this might have ruined it for me.

What I Learned from the Internet: Episode 5

Today I learned from the internet that reading everything through an RSS reader (which I do basically all the time) can really suck, because I love this banner so much that I am totally going to steal it and make it mine. Shhhh... don't tell Kris, ok?

World's best pick-up line.