Codeine stream of unconsciousness

Sniffle.  Sniffle.  Cough cough.  Sigh. 

Ah codeine cough medicine.  There was a request from my wonderful cousin Jaron that I write a blog while high on cough medicine.  Um, okay.  I have nothing better to do.  Children are at the dreaded x’s house and I haven’t changed out of my jammies in a day in a half so really, no pressing engagements.  I need to shower at some point.  Luckily I can’t breathe through my nose so who really cares if I shower if I am the only one here.  Henry the cat could care less.  Personally, I think he has enjoyed having me home the past two days.  When I fall asleep I tend to become his couch.  He’s getting heavy too…

I would love to know what his meows mean.  I mean, I have a feeling I know what some of them mean because there is some serious attitude behind them, but it would be cool to have an animal translator. 

Alone and sick.  No one to smell me and no one to bring me soup. (pro and con) I would sell my soul for some chicken soup right now.  (Yes, this is my passive aggressive way for me to get some soup delivered to my house today by someone who is reading this and lives in LA.)  I actually tried to sell my soul to the devil once to become a famous actress but to no avail.  I found a crossroads (actually it was at the corner of Fountain and Highland) and told the devil that if he or she did exist, I would love to sell my soul to become famous.  I stood there for awhile.  Nothin.  So, now I am convinced there is no devil which means there is no hell which means there is no heaven and yet oddly enough, I still think there is a god.  I think she likes me too or at least appreciates me.  After all, my soon to be forty-four year old breasts still face north and that is all I need to believe.  Well, that and the idea of how cool my children are.  Max has been doing his best to make me feel better.  Nothing cuter than an eight year old who keeps handing you Kleenex and feeling your forehead. 

Why are tonsils there anyway?  Do we actually need them?  And what is a spleen for?  And why does it always seem like it is the first thing to be taken out on hospital dramas?

I am in a very reflective mood as of late (and not solely due to the codeine cough medicine) as  I have been teaching an over-view of existentialism all week to my 10^th graders because we start The Stranger by Camus on Monday; and if you have never read The Stranger you should totally read it.  Super awesome book.  Well, it did win the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature so yep, it is that good.  Plus The Cure wrote this really cool song called Killing an Arab that people thought was about killing middle-easterners but was really about The Stranger.  Apparently, most people hadn’t read the book and the record was yanked off of the air.  Yes, this was so long ago it was actually a record and not a CD or a download. Absurd any way you look at it.

Why are Pink Lady Apples so much better than Red Delicious?  Baked apples…mmmm…

Most things about my life seem to fall under the heading of absurd.  My career, the men in my life, my upper respiratory virus, and of course my blog.  But the absurd blog is the fun part.  It’s the only way I can vent lately.  If I keep the sarcastic rants flowing I tend to feel much better.  So now, today, we will have a codeine-infused sarcastic rant.  Seriously, I should have posted a warning at the top…oh wait, I did.  Never mind. 

What is the difference between an upper respiratory infection and a lower respiratory infection anyway?  Is one better or worse?

I can rarely take drugs such as these.  Most narcotics make me hurl.  Vicodin, Percocet, and Codeine on its own are just icky and horrible.  Which I guess is good so I could never become addicted to them.  I will stick to the shoe addiction and leave it at that.  But codeine cough medicine seems to work just fine and not make me hurl just make me apathetic and then sleepy and then less cough-y.  Yes, that is now an adjective. 

When I was in labor with Max I had written on my birth plan (ya know, that thing you spend a month writing because you want your baby’s birth to be a certain, specific and perfect way and it goes out the window the minute you arrive at the hospital and realize that even though your water broke you are still at one centimeter and have to go on pitocin anyway) that I could not take narcotics. I had told the doctor, the nurse and the anesthesiologist so of course when the epidural went in after I got to five centimeters and couldn’t breathe through the contractions anymore; of course they put narcotics in the epidural.  Why they would actually listen to the person in labor…anyway…long story short, they were able to take out the narcotics and leave the block.  They also shut the whole thing off when I got to ten centimeters so I was able to feel everything at the end.  Which although my birth experiences were absolutely the most amazing of experiences, the Johnny Cash song Ring of Fire was totally stuck in my head while I pushed my boys out.  Okay, it's now stuck in my head again.  Good song.

Why do gummy bears taste so damn yummy?  They are like squishy pieces of heaven.  If anyone drops off soup to me, could you bring some gummy bears too please? 

So I am getting a bit woozy and there is a couch with my name on it.  Mmm…couch…sleep….good….

I have the most wicked dreams on codeine.  Very symbolic, very graphic, some a bit violent and I did wake myself up screaming last night but that was because I dreamt there was an earthquake and the floor of my house had a big chasm in it and the couch I was on flew across the room with me on it.  But hey, I also had one about finding a room full of clothing just for me.  Bikinis that had feathers, Prada dresses with matching shoes, and suede pants that fit perfectly.  They made my ass look good, so I knew it was a dream.  Dash told me my booty looked squishy today.  I told him that’s what happens when booties get older.  I think I may have scared him with that.  He spent the rest of the morning trying to look at his own super cute booty. 

Why is it a murder of crows, a congress of baboons, a pride of lions but just a group of humans?  We seem to have a self-esteem issue when it comes to anthropomorphic collective nouns.

So, Cousin Jaron, I hope you enjoyed this.  If you weren’t up in San Francisco and were less than an eight hour drive from me, I would suggest you bring me soup.

Of course you can’t hear me, I have a vagina.

Seriously.  Just…seriously. 

I have begun to discover that NOT hearing me is specifically a gender issue.  Yes, I am being totally sexist but the past few weeks men, guys, boys, and dudes have made this abundantly clear.  Don’t get me wrong, I mean, it’s not all men that don’t listen to women -- Ya know, never mind.  That last little justification was totally me wanting men to think that I thought they thought that I thought some of them were actually  listening to me in case I was dating one of them and they decided to support my writing and read this and then they thought I meant them.  Yep.  Nope, I meant all of them.   From age five to seventy-five no man seems to listen to any woman I know of.

 It’s not really a hearing problem and I don’t think it is a listening problem.  At first I thought it was specific to culture and upbringing.  I thought specific misogynist cultures taught their young men to ignore the important things that come out of a woman (not just babies) and really she is just there to take care of you and she doesn’t identify with or recognize the ways of a man’s world.  Once I knew of a man who said that when he arrived home at his house every night, he put his logic away because he just couldn’t do logic with his wife.  I bit my lip so hard when I heard that one, my tooth went through my lip.  Seriously, there are some men out there who when you are speaking directly to them and you are the one who is guiding the conversation with your thoughts and opinions; they have trouble actually looking into your eyes while you speak.  They not only avoid eye contact, but they look away or over your head.  You know they are diligently trying NOT to hear a word you say.  When this is happening, I usually wonder one of three things:  He doesn’t want to talk directly into my cleavage; there is a booger in my nose; or if he acts like a sexist-pig who has no interest in what I am saying long enough, I will just stop talking and go away.  Yep, I am guessing it's the last one.  I am hoping it’s not the middle one. 

The thing is men from all cultures, races, nationalities and religions; they all do the same thing.  And yes, I know a myriad of them stare at my boobs when I speak; but that is the mixture of having large breasts that are right in front of them and the innate male-must-stare-at-a-woman’s-breasts-gene.  Ah, the inherent qualities of a man.  Ya know, like the farting-in-public-gene, the can’t-find-the-hamper-gene or the-ice-cube-trays-will-refill-themselves-gene.  In the male of the species’ DNA there is also the I-can’t-hear-you-because-you-are-a-woman-gene. 

I think it is a gene.  For most of them, I don’t think they are knowingly being sexist.  I mean not all of them.  Yes, some of them get off on being chauvinist pigs and who treat women as though they only have the cooking, cleaning and shopping gene.  And yes, I realize the irony of using the example of the “shopping gene” considering who is writing this blog in the first place and my propensity for cute shoes.   Oh, shut up, I love my shoes and it is not a woman-gene, it is a woman-who-has-good-taste-and-can-find-things-on-sale-gene.  (and I am sure I inherited it from my mother.)

 My adorable and lovable male children could be a foot away from my face and I repeat over and over information and instructions and food options.  They don’t even turn around.  They don't even flinch.  I even tried an experiment with Dash once where I told him, two feet away from his little face, that I was going to take him to buy ice cream before dinner and he could have a double scoop.  Nope, didn’t hear that one either. He kept playing with his Pokémon.  It was amazing.

 Maybe men not listening to women could just be a case of bad manners.  Most men don’t really have great manners unless they went to cotillion classes when they were younger.   Perhaps they have manners for the first few dates when they are on their most polite and best behavior and still hoping they have a shot of seeing you naked.    I was hanging out with a friend of mine this weekend and he was an anomaly.  He had the most chivalrous manners and he was raised by a fabulous feminist mother.  I love that.  Here was this awesome feminist mom and she taught her only son to treat women with respect and manners. That chivalry was actually a sign of respect.  I felt not like a lady but like a woman.   The man actually opened the car door for me.  When was the last time someone opened the car door for me?  Nowadays, a man thinks that hitting the electric unlock button while on his side of the car, makes it seem like he is opening the door for a woman.  But this guy, he actually walked to my door, opened it and even took my hand.  It was the weirdest and most lovely thing that has happened to me in a long while.  He probably didn't listen to me, but it balanced out with his chivalry.

It’s not just the not-listening thing but the interrupting thing as well.  I love when guys do that.  It makes me feel all pretty.  My students do that all the freakin time.  Mostly the male students.  I will be on the third word of a sentence and without even raising their hand they will just interrupt with the most inane of questions like “when is this class over?” or “did you see the Mayweather fight over the weekend?”  Yes, the pugilist princess, that’s me.

Anyway, it is just aggravating me lately.  That's funny, that makes it sound as if I tolerated it before or something.  That almost sounded like once upon a time I had patience for people who didn’t listen to me.  

Tonight I gave Dash a time-out for not listening to me.  Again.  At all.  I had just lost my patience with him and the entire male dominated society that doesn’t listen to me either.  I think I wanted to give a few other males a time-out but he was the only one at my house. 

He seemed so small at the kitchen table, all by himself in his pouty-time-out-ness.  I wondered what he was thinking about.  Perhaps he was reflecting upon his punishment.  Perhaps he was replaying episodes of Star Wars the Clone Wars in his head.  Conversely, after his five minutes of solitude were up, I sat him on my lap with his blanket named “geegee” and asked him if he knew why I had gotten so mad at him and had given him a time out in the first place.  He said it was because he was not listening again. 

Wow, he may have actually heard me.  

Magicians and bouncers and cake. Oh my.

Yesterday was one long ass day.  It began at 3:54am when someone texted me.  Being the worried Jewish mother that I am, I checked to make sure it wasn’t a family member in Minnesota texting with bad news.  It was from someone simply saying “hi”.  Really?  3:54 in the morning to say hi when you know I am a mom/teacher who never gets to sleep in on a Saturday?!?!  I was pissed.  I ignored it and crawled back into bed.  I fell into a fitful half sleep for awhile until my alarm, which I had forgotten to unset rang loudly at 5am.  I was pissed.  I turned that off and fell into my bed.  Again.  Ten minutes later, Dash came in.  I asked him what was wrong and he said he just “needed some snuggling”.  Yeah, couldn’t be pissed at that.   He curled into me like a kitten and promptly fell back to sleep.  I dozed until my phone rang at 6:17am.  Someone I actually like talking to but couldn’t muster the energy.  Too tired to be pissed.  I laid there, willing myself to go back to sleep with my five and a half year old snoring up a storm.  Ten minutes later, just as I could feel my eyes close, Max woke up and asked for breakfast.  Okay, I’m up now.  Whatever.

Coffee, super-hero-chocolate milk, cartoons and an argument of who got to go on the computer first.  I acquiesced and let Max go on first.  I corrected papers, made a phone call (to someone in Minnesota who was two hours ahead of me) and with that the day began.  Oh look, it was 7am. 

After making the request for the kids to get dressed and brush their teeth six times, we finally got to the YMCA around 10am and I mustered up the caffeinated energy I needed to work out.  I figured we had two birthday parties to go to so working out would be the pre-emptive strike I needed to allow cake.  Twice.

Birthday party number one.  Outside in the beautiful California sunshine, eight year old children chased each other around the lawn, munched on pizza and cake and screamed and giggled with glee.  Yes, there was actual glee.  I had remembered to bring my multi-level enzymes so I could actually eat pizza.  Ah, the life of a forty-three year old, well, forty-three and three quarters year old, who can no longer digest anything properly.  My spasming esophagus reminds me of this daily.  So, multi-level enzymes and aloe vera juice and I keep the gluten and raw food to a minimum; but I was really hungry and there was pizza so whatever.  Oh please, I have to take enzymes when I eat a freakin salad too.  Seriously.

Then the magician arrived.  Yikes and a half.  All of the mommies watched this man walk in and the same two thoughts seemed to occur to all of us. When was the last time this man had sex and wow, this man belongs in a Star Trek shirt.  Balding and long hair at the same time with a polyester suit.  Puns and silly humor geared to small children (which was good considering it was a children’s birthday party) cool magic tricks that astounded my children and magic wands in the goody bags.  Dash was so taken by the disappearing rabbits and magic cards that I asked the magic man how much he charged for a children’s birthday party.  After he told me how much he charged I said thanks and turned to leave.  He grabbed my arm and yanked me a bit closer to him.  He tried to engage in a dialogue as I tried to escape.  He asked for my number and right at that moment, Max had a bathroom issue.  Thank goodness for my children.  I ran quickly away and then oops, we had to leave for the next party.  Whew.

Seriously not enough magic in the world…

I dropped Max off at his dad’s and ran a few errands with Dash before the next bash began; all the while with him toting along his magic wand.  He turned me into a rabbit, a turtle, an elephant and a princess.  Although the last one didn’t take much magic. 

Birthday party number two was Dash’s best friend's so we had to go home and change clothes because in his words, he wasn’t dressed up enough.  I love that.  My little fashion plate. 

The second party.  Outside in the beautiful California sunshine, five year old children chased each other around the lawn, munched on pizza and cake and screamed and giggled with glee.  Yes, there was actual glee.  Again.  I love the sound of glee.  Plus there was a bounce house and nothing says fun like a bounce house.  Personally, I try to avoid actually going into the bounce house with the kids as there are not enough sports bras in the world for that activity. 

After an hour and a half, Dash was starting to crash.  Too much sugar and no nap.  For both of us.  We left and I dropped him at his dad’s for their regular Saturday night sleepover otherwise known as “mommy’s night to recharge her batteries”.  Also known as “mommy’s night to drink wine”.  I promptly opened a bottle and collapsed on my couch.  Then the eternal Saturday night question popped into my head:  To go out or not to go out?  My mom keeps telling me I need to go out more but the idea of leaving my couch...hmmm.  Plus there were things to watch on my DVR.  Couch it was.  I think I lasted until 10:30pm and then fell asleep while watching My Favorite Year. 

I’m getting boring and lazy in my old age.  Perhaps I will go out next weekend.  Hey if I get desperate, there is always the scary magician guy. (shudder)

What I really need to do is to go out dancing.  I mean, when was the last time I went out dancing?  Dancing is fun.  At least I remember that it was fun...hmmm.  Anyone want to go out dancing next weekend?  Of course I would have to leave my couch for that.  Although I could just dance on my couch…

Too cool for school and too hot for teacher

I started back two weeks ago to teaching high school English in the hood but as most teachers will tell you, you barely start teaching until the second week.  Okay, maybe just my school.  They made the kids do a diagnostic standards (CST) test for two days.  This was nice because I could do my lesson plans.  Of course, that was blown to hell when they informed me my books were not going to arrive.  Luckily, that has happened the last two years, so I was ready for it.  There was a plan B; hell, there was a plan C too. 

I have 9^th and 10^th graders this year.  Three classes of each.  They look so cute in their little uniforms.  Burgundy sweater vests with ties and white shirts and khakis.  They hate them.  Oh, man do they hate them.  Especially when it is 100 degrees outside and 110 in my classroom. 

So, here’s a funny story (I winced and gritted my teeth on “funny” just so you know.):  Los Angeles began a heat wave on Monday.  It was Labor Day so it was spent with my boys at a neato farm in the Valley in the morning (before it got hot) where we got to feed farm animals and I tried to get the boys to pick some veggies that they might like to eat.  The carrots “scared” Dash and Max said he would stick with apples.  Forget the strawberries.  That was like a hour of begging and I finally gave in.  I will just keep hiding the veggies and fruits in their food.  I will shove it in there any way I can. 

The afternoon was spent at the pool.  Ah, I love the pool.  Even though you know like, every single kid (and probably some adults) have peed in it.   But hey, swimming in the sunshine?   Nothin’ cuter than little white tushies after the pool.  (Theirs, not mine) Even with 50 SPF we all still were tan like we were on vacation.  When we have a national holiday on a Monday, I like to pretend it is a vacation.  Just a little one.  I like to put a little umbrella in my coffee and try desperately to move slowly and languidly throughout the day.  Yep, that never works.  My children’s usual languid nature is enough to make me go from languid to impatient in like an hour.  Seriously, be relaxed but actually listen and do something by the third time I ask.  It’s like I have a button stuck on repeat.  “Don’t touch that.  Don’t touch that.  Don’t touch that.”  “Because I said so.  Because I said so.  Because I said so.”  “Put the cat down.  Put the cat down.  Put the cat down.”  Jeez, not really much of a vacation now that I think of it.  But there was a pool, so…

Anyway, back to the heat wave story.  So, Tuesday, I walk into my classroom and it is like a sauna.  I turn on the air conditioner and it begins to spit luke warm air into a two foot radius.  I turn on the fan, spray my room with air freshener and begin to sweat.  It is not even 8am.  By 10am, my room becomes reminiscent of a male locker room without all of the naked people.  I diligently try to teach and remind my students that in December when the heater doesn’t work and it’s 45 degrees in my classroom, they will long for today.  I tell them they can take off the sweater vests, which is like a federal offense at my school.  They are fanning themselves with their grammar work sheets.  At least they are good for something.  Perhaps the adjectives will fly off of the page and stick to their brains.  It could happen.

Wednesday is even worse and by the afternoon, I have had knocked back six bottles of water and sweated most of it out.  The idea of eating is repugnant and I just keep sipping, chugging, drinking water.  I begin to wonder if it is hotter outside than inside and realize there is no difference.  It is 100 degrees outside and a bit warmer and more humid in my classroom.  Teaching grammar becomes amusing as we come up with adjectives to describe my room.  Hot, sweaty, humid, disgusting, sticky, stifling, etc.  At one point I decide to buy loofas and seaweed and open a spa.  Perhaps a nice sweat lodge with a drumming circle.  One administrator visits my classroom and asks if I knew how hot it was.  Really?  I want to say “duh” but refrain as there are fewer and fewer teaching positions available in Los Angeles so I need to keep my muggy one.

Thursday morning and it is even worse.  It’s like the Florida Everglades and I am sure I have spotted an alligator loitering near the bathroom.  The maintenance man comes and wants to know who turned my heater on.  I laugh, thinking he is joking.  He is serious. 

“You mean the heater that hasn’t worked in three years?”  I asked.  “Yes, your heater is on.”  “Oh seriously…”  I sit down on my makeshift couch (the backseat of a minivan, no really) and laugh.  The students laugh.  Nice break, but we continue to learn about adjectives with no end in sight.  My favorite part is when Mr. Maintenance Guy tells me the air conditioner would work better at 76 degrees.  I just stare at him, my mouth open, sweat dripping down my back.  Yep, that makes sense.

I weighed myself at the gym today and have lost five pounds.  So who cares? 

Back to the sauna tomorrow to teach Lyric Poetry.  Sweater vests optional. 

Magic-mommy-boo-boo-kisses

Tonight is Max’s 8^th birthday party.  It’s a slumber party with three of his pals with a Pokémon theme.  I took two Tylenol as a pre-emptive strike.  I hate Japanese Anomie of any kind.  I remember when Pokémon first came out and it was annoying then.  It also amazes me that my spell-check recognizes that Pokémon is spelled wrong until it has a little accent over the 'e'.  It freakin’ corrected me.  That just seems so wrong in so many ways I would need a brightly colored chart to explain it. 

But hey, Max and his friends are happy and I am able to do laundry and write a blog. So, I’m not complaining.  Of course it’s only 8pm and it is a sleepover so this is going to be a really, really, long night.  They have been here for two hours and they have had pizza and birthday cupcakes, played on the swings and now are on to the video game portion of the evening.  There will be a Lego building contest next and then a Pokémon marathon.  I just heard the phrase “whoever smelt it dealt it” so you know they are enjoying themselves.   They are all really nice kids and they haven’t annoyed me once.  In fact, I don’t have to entertain them and frankly, I don’t think they really want me here.  Except to make cupcakes (double chocolate) and pick them up when they fall over.  They are too old for boo-boo kisses so I don’t even have to deal with that.

It’s weird.  Not the boo-boo kisses.  Although I thought my magic-mommy-boo-boo-kisses would last a little longer.  The whole growing up waaaaaay too fast thing, that is weird.   Seriously, wasn’t it was just yesterday Max was obsessed with Thomas the Train and spent hours saying “Thomas is bwu!”  And the day before that wasn’t he putting his toes in his mouth while I was changing his diaper and he was doing that silent baby laugh that makes you just smile when you think of it?  And just last week I was rocking him in my arms looking down at a day old baby, marveling at what I had created.  Hold on a sec, there is something in my eye.  No, I was not tearing up at the thought of my baby growing up.  Seriously.  Oh shut up.

Dash is starting kindergarten next week.   He has recently decided his is really seven years old and not five.  He told me the other day that when he was born he was actually two years old.  I told him that I was the one who was there and also the one that pushed him out into the world and really, I remember him being much younger than two years old when he was born.  He argued with me for an hour. 

He is trying desperately to fit in with the big eight year olds; just like I did when my older sister had her birthday sleepovers.  I hated being the younger sister back than but now really enjoy reminding her that she is older.  And will always be older than me.  Much, much older than me.  (Alright, to be fair she is only two years older but she used to throw balled up socks at my head while folding laundry so I will now keep reminding her that she is MUCH older than me.)

Anyway, so Dash is trying to pretend he is seven and the older kids want to know when his bedtime is.  Poor little guy.  He is sitting on the couch holding his stuffed Pikachu in one hand and his security blanket, named GeeGee, in the other.  He keeps looking up at me with these big brown eyes.  I keep blowing him kisses.  He smiles and catches them. 

They are all so cute, these little guys.  Someday they are going to be men.  That will scare the bajeezus out of any mommy.  How do I make sure they make the right decisions and don’t screw up their lives?  How do I make sure I make the right decisions and don’t screw up their lives?  Crap. 

Can’t they just stay this way?  Ya know, shorter than me, still holding my hand and still asking for snuggles?  Well, snuggles when they are not trying to be cool in front of their friends.  Crap it is starting already. 

But in the quiet solitude of our home, they still crawl onto my lap and lean against me and I smell their hair and sing to them.   I wish upon stars with them, I wipe away tears from their eyes,  I whisper secrets and give out a million kisses.  And my magic-mommy-boo-boo-kisses will still be needed from time to time.  I hope.

Hold on, there is something in my eyes again…

My shoes weigh five pounds

I think I have finally figured out this whole difference-thing between men and women. Ya know, besides the whole penis and vagina thing.

I was at the gym today and I was watching these two guys weigh themselves on one of those doctor scales. After they weighed themselves they just left it there. They didn’t move the numbers back to zero. There it was: their actual weight right there for everyone in the whole gym to see. They didn’t seem to care. Seriously. It baffled me.

When I weigh myself (which I have stopped doing, by the way, but we’ll get to that in a sec) I bring a gigantic black drape and hang it around the entire weighing area, then slowly I get on the scale. I then calculate all the things I can take off from the final weigh-in number. Ya know, like when was the last time I poo-ed and if my shoes are on (some are heavier than others. If they are my snake skin boots, forget it. That would be at least five pounds I could deduct) and how much under-wire weighs. Plus the gigantic black drape I am hiding under to weigh myself has got to be at least three more pounds to deduct. Weighing myself is seriously one of the only times I am really good at math. Well, that and when I have to take 25% off of the clearance rack at Loehmanns. Then before I even get off the scale I put all of the numbers back to zero. I check to make sure there are no fingerprints or smudges on the actual numbers I had moved the bar too, just in case. I then either smile and eat a cookie cuz I can or I pout and then eat a cookie because I am now depressed.

Most men just eat cookies because they feel like eating a cookie.

Then there is the pool. That is just a place of…well…interesting choices. If you have really good self esteem and are not totally bikini ready, yet feel the need to wear a bikini then good for you. I applaud you. You rock.

But seriously, men who are like, forty pounds overweight in a Speedo? Seriously? Do I really need to see that? Do my children really need to see that? You watch most women at the pool and they are sucking it in for all its worth. (I didn’t mean that to sound dirty.) Men just let it hang out. (Wow, seriously, I am not even trying to make that sound dirty) Sometimes I think that unless you are a fabulous gay man, you will not really be concerned by your swim suited body. Unless you are a women who doesn’t need therapy, you will just not breathe while pool side. Because when I am in a bikini, there is some serious judgment going on. Well, at least inside my head.

This is depressing me and now I want a cookie.

This summer my schedule was different (and very, very long) from my regular schedule with work and hauling children places and I couldn’t find time to work out. It sucked. All of the anxiety I have in life I like to work off on the treadmill and trust me, there is a lot to work off; but this summer I couldn’t get my ever growing ass to the gym to get on the treadmill so I ate to make the anxiety feel better. Because you know that totally worked. So now I am ten pounds heavier and trying distractedly to get back on a schedule and trying desperately to not eat sugar and trying frenetically not to add stress about my weight gain to my list of things to be frenetic and anxious about. Ya know?

When you lose seventy pounds and gain some back it is a bit aggravating to deal with. I haven’t gotten on a scale since July and now the scale at the gym just glares at me when I walk by. I know what it is thinking too. It is totally judging me and laughing quietly. Stupid scale. Why do you have to be so mean? You’re just a stupid machine! Oh, wait. Then it couldn’t judge me. Ya know, unless it was a transformer. Well, all I know is that there is some serious judgment going on. Well, at least inside my head.

It is hard enough to date as it is. I don’t need to deal with the exasperating question of whether I should wear Spanx or not on a date under my clothes to smooth me out. They may hold you all in and make you look fabulous and non-squishy and jello-y, but then you have to think about if these Spanx were ever to be taken off of your squishy and jello-y body, what then would you look like? Could I really hold my stomach in for that long?

Again, some serious judgment going on here. Yes, just inside my head.

Seriously, I still want a cookie…