What, no candles?

Let it never be said that Mr Stapler and I don't know how to party. For his birthday, I got up before he fully awoke. I left to go to church, forgetting to eat breakfast, so my stomach rumbled like a freight train all the way through the service. Nice.

Much later in the day, we met up so that he could bring me the computer charger that I had left at his house. We decided to go to Kmart. Because there is nothing that says birthday merriment like a Sunday afternoon spent strolling the completely-trashed aisles of Kmart.

Not only was it Kmart, but it was the very Kmart that I had worked at as a cashier when I was 19. I was regaling Mr Stapler with this fascinating history when we got to the checkout line, where two heavily-mascara'ed girls, both about the age I had been when I slaved there, were working.

Mr Stapler and I might as well not have existed, because the girls ignored us and kept talking as they scanned our items (a lovely 4-tier wire rack in chrome for Mr S; five Hawaiian print dish towels for me. Both Martha Stewart brand).

"Well, it's funny because I used to be so tiny," said Blondie to her friend. "I was like a size 00 or less than a 00. But now I am like a one or a three. What size pants do YOU wear?" she asked the other girl.

"Oh, man, it's so bad. Like a 7 or 9," said the second girl, a Latina.

"That's because you have a huge butt," said Blondie.

I gaped. "She did NOT just say that," I said.

"Uhhhh, thanks," said the Latina sarcastically.

"I mean, it's ok, white girls don't have any butts, you know, but I wish I did have a booty like you," Blondie babbled.

"I beg your pardon," I said, turning around. "Here is your evidence. If there is a big butt competition, I believe I would be the winner."

That shocked and shut them up for a second. Yes, the old lady does indeed have a colossal ass.

"I want to let it be known that, though I worked at this very Kmart, I never once told someone they had a big butt," I proclaimed.

"It's okay, she's my friend," said Blondie.

"I wouldn't be so sure about that," I warned. "I'd keep an eye on my Coke from now on because you never know when you might find a dead bug floating in it."

Because you KNOW I would.

"You're blogging about this?" said Mr Stapler.

"How can I not?" I asked.

He took me back to my car and we parted ways, having celebrated a mid-40s birthday about as well as one expects.

(Note: we did have a very nice evening together last night. Complete with our favorite restaurant owner singing in Italian and tiny cups of chocolate liqueur. Not bad.)

Ring the bells

It's Mr Stapler's birthday. Do me a favor - pay him a visit at his blog, leave him a comment and give him your best birthday wishes.

While you are there, you might remind him how very lucky he is. YOU know why.

Hey shorty.

I don't know why certain things wrench my heart so badly. Today, I read a news story that shattered me into a million pieces. It was about the practice of giving high-dose hormone treatments to young women to keep them from getting "too tall." This started back in the 50s when hormone treatment was the rage for everything from menopause to acne. What is less known is that it continues even today.

As few as 6 years ago 1/3 of pediatric endocinologists were still giving girls this dangerous hormone treatment that is likely to cause infertility issues.

After surgeries came cervical polyps and later giving birth at 24 weeks to an infant girl who lived an hour. She persisted and became pregnant again, only to deliver twin boys at 21 weeks, one stillborn and one who also lived for only an hour. At age 38, Waldvogel and her husband tried one last time, and after a problem-filled pregnancy, delivered her daughter, now 2. By that time she had met two other women who also had received estrogen treatment when they were girls to prevent growth; they found that among them they'd lost 10 children.(emphasis mine)

I guess it all works out in the doctor's minds. After all, tall women frighten some men. And if women can't get a man because they are too tall, they can't have a baby anyway. So it is either infertility, "excessive" height and health, or infertility, a slightly reduced height - almost normal, thank goodness - and shitty health. Life without a man is worse than poor health, obviously. So bring on the hormones! Little Janie will be so much happier little!

It just makes me want to bang my head on my desk. It is bitterly ironic to me that we still torture our bodies in unnatural ways in an attempt to become "more normal." That's food for thought.

Must be stopped

Who told me about Etsy? Can they be punished somehow? So far, I have purchased Christmas cards, a button, a book, earrings, a necklace and 5 lip balms.

When you find me living in a cardboard box behind the train station, you can blame it on an Etsy addiction. So many things! So cute! And I am supporting artisans! All this shopping is for a good cause! Long live the artisans and their cute things! (my apologies to Amalah for borrowing her exclamation points.)

One thing I noticed - about oh, 99.7 percent of Etsy shops are run by women. Their prices tend to be ridiculously low. Check out these insanely cute baby shoes for $7.00! Crazy.

Then I find ONE shop by a man and his prices are well, a bit higher. These signs are really cool. but they are tiny little prints. Smaller than a postcard. And 8 are $51. It just makes me wonder about men and women. How is it that men seem to value themselves so highly, and women so little?

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Thanks for all your comments on blogging and privacy. I really appreciate the perspective.

****

New Linkateria AND True Employee Confessions. Still shamelessly begging for your work confessions, past or present, anonymous or signed, at snackishblogATyahooDOTcom. Thank you.

Secret? Who's got a secret?

I arrive at my folks' house every morning about 6:57 a.m. Too early to be very functional.

This morning my mom peered at me. "Are you doing much with your blink or your blog or whatever you call it?"

Oh shit.

"Ahhhhh...naw, Mom, I have slowed down a lot." I'm madly scrambling. The blog she has seen is my food blog, which I have updated about 3 times in the past year.

"Oh, because your sister said that you write a lot about your dog," she said.

"Well, yeah...of course" I said lamely.

"I don't even know how to get there," she said.

"It has a URL like every other web page," I said vaguely.

"Well," said mom. "If you don't want to talk about it, you don't have to."

"Hey, did you see the sunrise? Pink and purple!" I said.

I am 45 years old. OLD. If I were any kind of mature, I would tell my parents about my blog and let them deal with it. But I caaaaaan't.

My mom is just such a naive person. She is almost naive by sheer force of will. She stays horrified and appalled by the modern world with a kind of steely determination. She's the kind of person who doesn't watch movies because there is too much swearing in them.

I need my blog privacy. I need my little chunk of the world where I can spew to random strangers and block my family out. How does that make sense? I guess it makes my life easier, because my readers either tell me what they think or they go away, but they rarely ask me to explain every little thing. And my mom, especially, would want me to explain Every Little Thing. And she would worry about me and my sanity. I just don't want the weight of that caring on me. I know I am sane for the most part. I just can't steel myself for the onslaught that exposing my blog to my mom would bring.

Do any of you hide your blogs? If so, why? Tell me I am not an ogre for wanting to keep this from the people who love me most.

Phone Call with Mr Stapler

Mr Stapler: You must just be leaving your class.
Me: How did you know?
Mr Stapler: Because it is Tuesday at 8 p.m. and you are a creature of habit.
Me: No, I'm not.
Mr Stapler: Where are you going now?
Me: To Trader Joes, to buy the kind of soup I eat every night for dinner.

Yes, I do. I eat the same thing every night unless I go out. Here's my rationale: when I start cooking, I start tasting and eating. Before I know it, I have had 1000 calories for dinner, which, given my current level of slothitude, I do not need.

For some strange reason, the Trader Joe's Red Pepper and Tomato Soup fills me up and satisfies me. So that's what I eat for dinner. Every single night.

Other regular things around Casa de la Loca?

Breakfast? Two slices of toast with butter and jam and decaf coffee.

Our house wine is Rosemount Cabernet/Shiraz blend. Our house gin is Tanqueray. If you don't want red wine or gin, there is a grocery store 3 blocks away. Start walking.

The house coffee is Peet's Mocha Java decaf. Major Dickason's for weekends.

Our house starches are, in an attempt to be somewhat healthy, sprouted wheat bread and whole-wheat tortillas.

Our house dog food? Nutro Chicken and Rice chunks. The only kind of canned food Goldie will eat at all. She may be part cat. Or maybe just a creature of habit, too.

Blah blah blah Linkateria, blah blah blah True Employee Confessions. If I don't pimp them here, no one ever visits. Sniff.

And in other news, I am ready to send all the sickos who find this blog by searching for disgusting search strings ("mommy screwing animals," "little girl in the mens bathroom stall pooping") on one of those special CIA planes to Eastern Europe where very bad things will happen to them. Human rights violation? I am over it. Just make sure they never come back to my blog, that's all I ask.

Smother me in a wet blanket

I watched the Tournament of Roses Parade with my parents. What a shameful spectacle. At least according to my mom.

"I heard one of these bands raised a million dollars to pay for the kids to come to the parade. They should have spent that on books."

"Look at those outfits. They just spend so much money on ridiculous things."

"I wonder how much those saddles cost. Too much. It's just too much."

My mom, bless her heart, has a talent for nosing out the negative in any situation. It is more of a habit than anything. Unfortunately, I see the same tendency in myself.

The whole meal goes wonderfully, but I tell everyone that the waitress forgot my side dish. The trip is a blast, but my story about it is that we had to wait 2 hours on the plane before takeoff. Waa waa waa.

The other side of this tendency is that, when I only say the good parts of what happened, I feel a bit like a fraud. Like I am leaving out something important.

In defense of the T of R parade (it is NOT the Rose Bowl parade - the parade came first! Sensitive? Yes.), I built a float for 2 years when I was in college. When I say "built a float," I don't mean "glued flowers on." I mean that we created designs, chose one, drew plans, cut and welded metal, did electrical wiring, plumbed hydraulic lines, raised money, made meals, grew flowers, affixed chicken wire, covered the chicken wire, painted, sourced and prepared plant materials and THEN glued flowers on.

In that process, I learned more than I did in any of my classes. It was the college experience that I will remember long after I have forgotten everything else.

Was it silly? Yes. Was it expensive? Yes.

But we can't anticipate which of our life experiences will serve us best. Sometimes the silly and the things that take us off our regular path are the things that teach us most.

I also believe that humans need spectacle, grandeur, crazy larger-than-life events to drag us away from the mundane and practical. Otherwise it is all mundane and practical, and who wants THAT life?

Opera. Theater. Parades. Fashion. Pageantry. Who needs it? I think we all do. I think it is a big part of what makes us human and I don't want to live a life without it.

There are new links over at Linkateria. I am also still asking for entries for True Employee Confessions. Past, present, just hit me with your best, funniest, most annoying employee stories. How about the best time you got fired or quit? Email them to snackishblogATyahoo(etc)