When I buy clothing online and it’s available in fifty-three different colors, I always end up choosing this weird pinkish-cocoa color. I have so many things in this color, and I cannot for the life of me trace back my reasoning. I look fabulous in blue and green. Black is great. I can even pull off red and orange. But I keep ordering things in this shade that calls to mind weathered putty with a faint bloom of shower mold. Possibly I imagine I will dress it up with spanking white accessories, except I wouldn’t and won’t. Maybe I’d dribble some spanking white sour cream on myself and then Anna Wintour would spontaneously materialize out of the woodwork and use her veiny talons to applaud my fashion sense. But not so far.
Cavemanification of language. “I’m a boy mom!” Wow, so having sons is destroying your speech center? That’s rough. Or maybe you meant to express that you are the mother of boys. If only there were some linguistically comprehensible way of encompassing that idea, such as saying “I am the mother of boys” or “I have boys” or “No thank you, Bronxleee, putting our genitals on the cart is not Harris-Teeter appropriate, no thank you.” No, we must all stump around deliberately talking like we’re just coming out of anesthesia, because the world just isn’t stupid enough yet.
I have an excellent, relevant, interesting, well-researched and copiously illustrated story that would bring me tremendous traffic, and I decided not to run it because I can’t figure out how to do it without enlightened shitheads doxxing and probably sending death threats to some of the people involved in the story. Because everyone is now so woke, we start with death threats and then escalate from there.
Spiderman movie. Okay, I didn’t actually have any problem with it. It was very good and I liked it. We’re now on a really reliable schedule where Hollywood will allow the production of one enjoyable move every fourteen years, just like clockwork.
I’m watching my diet and started exercising again and it wasn’t good enough, and now I have to go on meds to control my blood pressure like a loser. This is stinkin’ thinkin’ and I know it, but the stink endures. The nurse helpfully told me that, when she was having some BP issues, she gritted her teeth and said no to the extra large, damp cardboard box of gas station nachos the other day. Not really my issue, friend-o, and don’t think I didn’t notice you turning sideways to get through the door. But thanks for the health tip. You really get me.
I have lost so many nice earrings. It’s just sad.
When I was at the clinic, there was a backless bench next to the registration line, with a small sign saying “please do not lean back.” If you want to know why healthcare is so expensive, that’s why: Because everyone’s sitting on backless benches and leaning back. They ought to just put in a trap door and a chute and thin the herd, SHE SAID PRO-LIFELY.
Where the hell is my garlic? I absolutely bought garlic, and now it’s nowhere. But sure, I guess I’ll go ahead and make salsa verde without garlic. Can’t wait to slather my carnitas with what will basically be hot grass clippings. Not that I can even find the blade for my food processor. It would be a terrible thing if I were allowed to have all the pieces at the same time.
This freaking cat is not going to be happy until he’s knocked every last thing I own off the table. But really, why would I want a cup of coffee to remain in an upright position? Where’s the excitement there? What’s really important here is that he follow his vocation as an asshole. I’m gonna make a backless bench out of him.
The local public radio announcer did a little blurb for a sponsor and then said the name of their website, which was “www.[something]dr.com”. The “dr” was obviously for “doctor.” But he pronounced it “durr.” Couldn’t agree more, you THUMB.
I bought some boots online and they’re great, except I can’t zip the right one up all the way. Yep, that’s correct, my right calf is significantly, measurably, boot-obsolescingly fatter than my left calf, because I not only have to be fat, I have to be halfway even fatter. If you think about how many years it took me to realize that it’s okay to buy myself boots, and then add on another three months while I waited for them to go on sale, this seems so thoroughly unfair, I could just cry.
You know what has sodium in it? Tonic water. A girl can’t even keep up with the fight against malaria without running afoul of her DASH diet. And I do *sob* not appreciate it.
Maybe I’ll run that story after all. Doxx you, February. Doxx you.
hi!,I love your writing so a lot! proportion we communicate extra approximately your post on AOL?
I require a specialist in this area to resolve my problem.
May be that is you! Having a look forward to see you.
Oh, if you are looking for an an enjoyable theater movie, may I suggest The Kid Who Would Be King? I know it’s “bombing” at the box office, but I took my seven- and twelve-year old sons to it and they thoroughly enjoyed it. (I have found that often what the masses hate, we like.) The actor who plays young Merlin does a fantastic job. Much better and less ear-wormy than Lego Movie 2 (which they enjoyed, but I mostly endured, even though there were some sweet moments).
I would like to offer you this delightfully eyeball-stabbing thread from DC Urban Moms (Park Slope Parents, but DC) on the subject of #boymoms: https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/751167.page
I know exactly which color you mean.
I have big fat thighs and skinny calves. It isn’t any better.
My favorite color is blue.
February is the longest shortest month, and I hate it too. but this column cheered me up. Thank you.
I love this so much. And as the mother of four boys , I hate the phrase “boy mom”. I don’t hear mothers of girls calling themselves “girl mom”. Because that would be….icky, right? GRAMMAR MATTERS, people.
I am going to add my 2 cents to the “getting older stinks” list by wondering why is it that at the ripe old age of 45 I am just now getting migraines? I mean horrible, awful migraines that last for days. And why, she asked rhetorically, must things like chocolate and coffee and soy sauce and other delicious things be on my trigger list? Damn it.
I hate shopping for clothes. Hate. With the fiery hate of a million suns. I would like to blame this on my mother, whose habitual response when I tried something on was to say, “Well, it hides your tummy,” or “In THAT one you can’t really see your bottom!” Once I stopped her from saying “Well that looks good on you–” by saying “Mom, do *I* look good in IT?” and she looked so confused and finally conceded, “Well, yes, that’s what I *meant*!”
I recently had to purchase some dress clothes for the first time about…over a decade, I suppose? Because my wonderful husband bought tickets to our favorite musical and we’re all going as a family and unfortunately that means nice clothes for a very fancy theatre. I am also going to be helping out at my son’s debate tournament, and everyone dresses nicely there. Dammit. I gritted my teeth and pre-shopped on Kohl’s website, read millions of reviews and finally found a dress that doesn’t make me look like a beached manatee. I think. I got one in black, because that is my default color. I’m like Batman, I work in black and very dark shades of blue and gray. I dipped my toe out of my comfort zone and got a wine-colored tunic and a forest-green button down shirt, and you’d have thought I’d put on Cinderella’s floofy dress, because my husband was all, “I LOVE purple! Oh my gosh! And you look so good in green!” Huh. I guess colors are okay sometimes. So I got a purple dress like the black one and I think maybe this dressing up thing isn’t that bad? We’ll see. I couldn’t find any black slacks that didn’t make me look a millions years pregnant *shakes fist at February* so I went for black jeans. They kind of look like dress pants. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
I bought a pair of boots online about two years ago. I liked the look of them, and then I read that they were specifically for your larger calved woman. I can usually stuff my calves into regular boots, but I liked the look of these boots, so I ordered them anyway.
Then they arrived and they won’t zip up. They simply won’t.
So I stuffed them in the back of my closet and take them out occasionally so I can try them on and feel angry and bad about myself. It’s the sort of plan that makes my therapist tilt her head and ask me if I think that’s helping me in any way. Sometimes I’m not crazy about my therapist.
Come to think of it, I bought and kept those boots in February. Doxx you, February, indeed.
There’s an old Garfield cartoon where he calls February the “armpit of the year.” Yes, yes it is.
On the diet issue – I started intermittently fasting at the beginning of October, and it is working so much better for me than Weight Watchers ever did. I’ve been a member of Weight Watchers on and off my entire adulthood, but after my fourth child, I couldn’t restrict my calories or exercise any more than I already was, and I was gaining weight. There are a lot of books about intermittent fasting – “The Obesity Code” by Dr. Jason Fung, “AC: The Power of Appetite Correction” by Dr. Bert Herring. A lady named Gin Stephens wrote a short e-book that is like a Cliff’s Notes of all the Intermittent Fasting books, called “Delay, Don’t Deny,” and I follow the program she outlines in that book. It’s short, and cheaper than a month of Weight Watchers. I’ve been losing an average of a pound a week, even over Christmas.
This post made me laugh out loud, thank you for that!
Also, “We start with doxxing and death threats and then proceed from there.” – one could write a massive think piece on that. What is happening to our society?
Elizabeth, can I ask what window you found works best for you? I’m trying to work my way towards eating between 10 and 6, but I often find I’m super hungry before that, at 9 am, and if I am hangry it’s hard to teach the kids.
I started with an 8 hour window from noon to 8pm, and tried to eat 2 healthy meals without snacking.
Now I eat within a roughly 4 hour window from 5pm to 9pm or 4pm to 8pm, because I taste for seasoning when I cook dinner.
The first 6-8 weeks were hard, but not harder than an everlasting Weight Watchers plateau at 1200 calories a day.
After that initial adjustment period, I played around with my daily window, but not much, because eating dinner and then a small dessert after the children are in bed really works well for me.
Thank you! I want to be able to eat socially with my kids especially at dinner, so I may start with a 9-6 and slowly shorten it up and push it back. Thanks for responding. I’m planning to give up snacking for Lent, so this may be the time to use this framework for discipline.
Please run the story you have researched. I read your column religiously (!), but I never read the comments. The stuff you are writing is pretty much keeping the Catholic Church alive for me as an option. I need for someone to be as angry as I am about the abuse scandal and be willing to talk, as opposed to scream or keep silent, about it.
I’ll park my complaint here, because I mostly agree that you and your writing, Simcha, are a blessing to anyone trying to stay Catholic. Also because your reference to the story you are considering not running was the only sour note (for me! other people probably have other problems!) in an otherwise very funny post.
But I am kind of irked that you blame “enlightened” and “woke” people for being all ready to doxx the people in your potential story. Seems like it’s idiots on the non-enlightened, non-woke side of your audience who tend to read your stuff and then do mischief. But, carry on! Go ahead and give your leftier readers a chance to be jerks. 🙂
You’ll have to trust me on this one. I know what I know.
Yes, please run the story!
You are hysterical! If I weren’t so lazy, I would describe for you which paragraphs have me rolling on the floor (or I guess I could even count and give you paragraph numbers, which I probably could have done in the time it took me to write this). Oh well.