Off Like a Prom Dress

Ah prom. The memories. The smell of Jagermeister, the tacky dress I wore, the boy who ignored me when I didn’t put out, and the long, endless train ride home 12 hours after curfew. What a night it was, filled with crappy music, an overpriced limo ride, and dozens of pictures – some of which even now lurk on Facebook. The chance to experience prom is one every teenager should have – so it is too bad a school district in Mississippi voted to cancel it. Why? It is because a malevolent spirit lurks within the town psyche, imprinting its horrid visage on teens, turning their dreams to nightmares and ultimately killing them in vicious and violent ways? Nope. Will a giant snake be released and the Hellmouth opened leaving an evil politician to take hold of the town? Nope. Bombs in the basement, set by a psychopath with a Jack Nicholson fetish? Nope. A girl wants to wear a tux and take another girl as her date.

WTF?

Let me get this straight. A girl wants to actually cover her body from head to toe in refined evening wear. She doesn’t want you to behold her bootyliciousness, titter at her ta-tas, or show how low the back of her dress can go. And this is wrong, why? Isn’t the sexualization of our youth a problem? Wouldn’t we rather teenagers who shun the pole for a nice pinstripe? Haven’t I seen umpteen pictures of famous, beautiful, and very sexy actresses rocking designer tuxedos and suits? Her school does not have a dress code of any kind, so I’m not entirely sure why they believe they can institute one just for prom. Formal wear required covers both tuxes and dresses, and considering the strappy, slit-to-here, backless, low-cut, and see-through outfits showcased on any episode of Toddlers and Tiaras, I can only imagine what the youth of today believes is appropriate evening attire. I’d rather my daughter dress like a penguin than a prostitute.

The next item of business is her choice of date. A girl wants to take another girl. Well, girl-on-girl action at least eliminates the problem of teen pregnancy, does it not? In a state with the third highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation, that has to count for something. She wants to take a sophomore. Well, as long as the date is over 16, they are both over the legal age of consent in Mississippi. And this isn’t even about sex. Though popular media would have you believe otherwise, not all teenagers have sex on prom night. Joey and Pacey did it on a senior ski trip. Willow and Oz did it on graduation day. Chances are, they’ve probably already done it: in the backseat of a car, the great outdoors, or a bed when their parents weren’t home. I doubt they were planning on getting it on whilst on the dance floor.

So, in the face of watching two women slow dance to Halo or rock out to Single Ladies, prom was cancelled. In this era of giving every child a medal, win or lose, or making every child an honor student, pass or fail, this school decided it was once again better to equalize the field and cancel prom than let any one child dance outside the box. What is this, Footloose-ville? Well jump back, but I don’t think kids should get busted for same-sex bopping.

Da’ Plane! Da’ Plane!

While the kids were away, I decided to play and get some new body art. This is not my first foray into the wild side. I had and removed at least two belly button piercings while in college and at one point, had up to three piercings in each ear. I know! Can you imagine? Multiple earrings? Belly rings? The horror! Sigh. It all seems to tame now. There are moms at pre-school pick-up with nose rings, but when I was in college, that was bad ass.

This time ‘round, I was aiming for a tattoo. This is also not my first time to that particular rodeo, but my first tattoo looked like it was drawn on with a Sharpie. That’s what you get from going to some backwater place in the wasteland between Pittsburgh and the Ohio border. Luckily, it was on my right (upper) thigh, so not a whole lot of people saw it. A few years later, I decided to add on to it. I had it designed by the artist who went ahead and filled out my previous tattoo, gratis, so as to “not make my art look like shit.” Well, ok then. At least this shop was in a town with a name on it, even if it was Greensboro, North Carolina.

Fast forward a decade or so (and change) and I am ready for my next piece of art. My money was in my pocket, the pieces of my design were in my hand, and I went to a tattoo parlor. I was ready, willing, and able. And yet, no ink. Nothing. Why? Because, to quote Pretty Woman, “the women were mean to me.”

The tattoo parlor in question or specifically, the heavily tattooed, pierced, hennaed, and dyed red-head who greeted me treated like a drunken 19 year-old on spring break ten minutes before closing time. I had not just crawled out from a bridge underpass and into their door. I had even showered that day! I was sober. I am so far over the legal age of consent that it is actually sad, and yet, I was still treated like trash. So I left. I did what any other right thinking individual would do in this situation and I vented on Facebook. Luckily, I have lots of good friends who pointed me in the right direction and hopefully, sometime in the near future, I will have a new tattoo.

But until that time, let me share my three simple rules of tattooing.

1 – Location, location, location. Don’t let your dolphin turn into a whale because you put it smack dab over your uterus. Babies stretch boobs and tummies far beyond all reason and will. Shamu isn’t going to diet itself back down to Flipper proportions. Along those lines, mind the gaps. If you are intent on becoming a corporate lawyer, perhaps the neck tattoo directly above your tie clasp isn’t the best idea and moving it down to your sternum would be better. I don’t believe you should hide your tattoos – but like clothing, hairstyles, and shoes, a tattoo makes an impression. If it isn’t one you would want to make on a complete stranger, then make sure you can cover it when appropriate.

2 – Look before you leap. Impulse tattoos and STDs have much in common – they are easily acquired, often unfortunate, and damn hard to get rid of. I had a friend who picked the Chinese characters for her name off a chart. As Chinese is not a letter-to-character language, who knows what the hell she actually has tattooed on her arm, forever. A little foresight or self-restraint goes a long, long way. If you want it, you’ll still want it in a few days.

3 – Your body is your temple. Don’t tramp stamp it. Don’t get something because it looks cool. Cool is relative. As Heidi says, one day you’re in, the next day you’re out. While a pair of flaming lips may be the classic ode to a classic band, you’d feel awfully stupid if you were sporting a Milli-Vanilli pair of dreadlocks on your back. Much like prayer, if you don’t mean it, it doesn’t count. So, make it meaningful.

It’s art, it’s interpretive, and it’s beautiful. But be wary, better to go through life without than with Wino Forever.

Coming Out of the Closet

Yesterday, a friend sent me an e-mail telling me about a great sale at an online store. I surfed and then I shopped. Did I buy for my husband, a man whose jeans are actually falling off his body due to recent weight loss? Did I buy for my son, who is finally outgrowing his 18 month clothes (at 30 months)? Did I buy for myself – a woman desperately in need of anything resembling grown-up attire?

Nope.

I bought for my daughter, who at five has more clothes than the rest of the family, combined. If I only did her laundry once per month, the only thing she would run out of is tights. My daughter has more princess dresses than I have regular dresses. She has many pairs of shoes and they all mix and match to her outfits perfectly. She has so many pairs of pajamas that they fill three dresser drawers. She has a rack just for purses. My child has a perfectly organized closet that is divided by type of clothes then subdivided into style, color, and degree of warmth.

If you had told me that I would give birth to this type of child. I would have laughed until I wet myself.

Would you like to know the irony of this situation? I dress like a 12 year old tomboy struggling with the onset of boobs – during the grunge era. Plus, I could fit all of my clothes into one large suitcase. (You never know when you might have to jam.)

All my t-shirts have sayings or logos on them. All of my outerwear comes from the men’s department. I have one pair of shoes for winter and one pair of shoes for summer – both black. I prefer winter colors. I cannot remember the last time I wore makeup and for me, leaving my hair down, completely straight and without any styling whatsoever, is being “fancy.” This is all I can manage, not owning a single styling product or appliance. I only had an extensive maternity wardrobe because my husband bought it all for me – or I would have spent nine months (times two) bulging out of a pair of ill-fitting sweatpants and an old VT sweatshirt. My bathing suit (singular) consists of a full-coverage tankini and a pair of board shorts that hits my knees. I am a sad excuse for a woman with a set of natural DDs (and even in that department, I aim for practical over prostitute.)

How did I get a child who believes that a tiara is perfect for any occasion? Obviously, God has a wicked sense of humor. But on top of that, my daughter has dueling grandmothers who shop competitively. It is not uncommon for my mother to show up with a dozen outfits for my daughter. She finds it harder to shop for my son, so he only gets a half dozen. Along the same lines, I do not send clothes when I send my children to visit their paternal grandparents. Instead, at the end of every season, they return home with bags filled with barely worn outfits (usually a size too large) that will be perfect for the following year. Throw in a husband who has never passed a children’s bargain rack without stopping and a fashionista was born. (Not to say my son is a slacker in the clothing department, but he likes to choose outfits based on animals or sports. He will request to be a Hokie, a hippo, an Eagle, or a fireman. As long as his pants fit, he’s good to go.)

So what is a mother to do? In this case, I indulge her –it’s like dressing an oversized and overly appreciative Barbie. I never pay full price, I try to buy a size larger when possible, and in the case of outerwear, I try to go neutral to allow for the successful handing down to her brother. How much longer will she happily wear whatever she is bought? How much longer until the arguments over brand begin? Who knows, maybe one day, she’ll help me pick out clothes and we’ll enjoy shopping together. It’s as likely as Tim Gunn stopping by to perform an intervention, but it could happen. But until the inevitable fighting begins (and considering her father’s very conservative taste in clothing, those fights are going to be epic), I will continue to stock her closet while my own sits empty and forlorn. If only one woman in this house is going to have fashion sense and personal style, it might as well be her, because as anyone will tell you, it sure as hell isn’t me.

Stupid Is as Stupid Does

When did I become stupid?

Most of the women I know with children did not start having them until after 30. This means, that after college, we had almost a full decade in the work force. Give or take a few bum jobs, we probably had at least five years in a career. We earned paychecks, benefits, bonuses, vacation and sick days. So why do people seem to think our brains leaked out of our bodies along with our breast milk?

Case in point – a friend of mine directed me to a news article entitled, Six Ways to Work from Home. They all featured women. They all were directed at stay-at-home mothers, not say, any of the million men or women who are also out of work and may be in need of some income. The smiling news anchor led off by saying, “If you need to make some extra money." Um, excuse me? what is "extra" money? Is there such a thing as too much money? Oh right, I’m a SAHM, I must need money for shoes and purses and pedicures. Not, say, cable or food or bedding.

Option 1 – Virtual Assistant. “All you need is a telephone, a headset, and a computer” – oh, and a mute button for your children. Most children go Pavlovian when the phone rings and instantly turn from quiet angels into rabid, screaming monsters. Sure, they say you can set your own hours, but how much demand is there for the graveyard shift in infomercial marketing? Well, ok, that question answered itself, but can you imagine the type of people you’d get to talk to at 3am? “A great agent can earn between $20 and $30 an hour.” Hmm. Really? It seems both suspicious and full of hidden clauses.

Option 2 – eJuror. And no, I am not making this up. “eJurors review cases and give their judgments.” This process supposedly helps trial lawyers prepare for court. Is this the depth to which our justice department has sunk? Wouldn’t it be easier to just find as similar case on any of the thousands of Law & Order episodes and see how the defendant made out? And how much does getting the completely unbiased viewpoint of the average web surfer cost? $5 to $20 per case. That’s a lot of jurisprudence to wade through just for one pair of Manolos.

Option 3 – Product Tester. You can be “hired for taste tests and local focus groups at taste test facilities, and yes, even in your own home.” A certain consumer marketing company has been calling my house for years – looking for my husband. I am not the key demographic. For anything. Ever. So while my husband has the option of leaving his salaried position for a leisurely afternoon taste-testing flavors of Cheetos, I’m SOL. And how much can you earn for your efforts - $30 to “a few hundred dollars” per survey. What cracks me up is up the shot of envelopes filled with crisp $50 bills. I think I’ll pass on tasting things that fell out of the back of the truck, thanks.

Option 4 – Online Tutor. This gives you the opportunity to “channel your inner teacher.” According to the story, you can set your own hours and earn hundreds of dollars per month. Ok, this one seems relatively legit and appears to require actual, you know, brain power. However, the timing issue comes back into play as most students aren’t productive learners at say 8pm, which is when I would finally be available to work with someone one-on-one without heavy bribery or Goldfish-induced carbohydrate comas.

Option 5 – Direct Marketer. Take your pick of Tastefully Simple, Avon, Tupperware, Pampered Chef, etc., ad nauseum. This news article showed us a “chocolatier” from Dove Chocolates. You too can annoy your friends and empty the wallets of your family by trying to get them to buy mass quantities of stuff no one needs. Do I mock? No, I do not. My mom was an Avon lady. I have been to plenty of these parties, respect all of the women who hosted them, and happily bought stuff to support them. However. The amount of time and effort you have to put in to actually earn real money (as opposed to free stuff) is astronomical. In fact, if you have that much time, energy, and marketing ability, then mayhap you could find a different use for your skills? You know, one that comes with a 401(k) and a benefits package. (Caveat – I would totally host ONE adult toy party.) So, how much does it pay? “A few hundred dollars a week.” What they don’t mention is that you are busting your ass over every penny, and once, again, hiding your children in the closet in order to earn it.

Option 6 – NetWork. Labeled as the “jackpot” of all work at home opportunities, it is, wait for it, a job fair. For the grand entrance fee of $5, you too can hobnob with “hundreds of . . . companies” to reach gainful employment. You too can become a life coach. Or a travel consultant. So, if I tell you to go to hell, am I a travel consultant? Or a life coach? Hard to tell really. You can “find creative ways to . . . find income.” Oh good grief. Pull the other one, it has milk in it.

Where are the CAREER options? I am highly educated. I am smart. I read. I write. I think. I even occasionally speak without pausing between words to try to remember what I was saying. I am not stupid. And one day, a company will come along that will harness the brain power of the stay-at-home mom and it will make a fortune. Until then, I’ll just have to continue earning my pay as a freelance editor. And my friends will continue to work as nurses, physical therapists, photographers, payroll advisors, doctors, pharmaceutical reps, retail managers – all of the things you do when you earn a degree and want a career, but also want time at home. Strangely, none of those things were mentioned in the article.

Fashion Forward

If I were in charge of the world, many, many things would be different.

First and foremost, all stores would carry items in season. It’s February. It’s cold. There is still a whole lot of snow on the ground, yet today, I was able to easily find and purchase a large selection of sand toys. Summer is a long ways away. Where are the snow toys? Where is the handy little square that makes perfect snow bricks for building your very own igloo? (My neighbor has one and it is awesome.) Where are the snowman kits? Hell, where are the gloves, hats, scarves, and sweaters? I went to Old Navy the other day and stopped dead in the aisle – they had shorts on the walls. Shorts! My house thermostat has never been set higher than 70 degrees (and only goes that high to chill the glacial thaw that is my mother’s presence.) Thus, it’s too cold to wear them inside. It’s too cold to wear them outside. I will be pale and pasty for two more months. Yet they had shorts out! Blasphemy.

This whole shopping out of season thing completely confounds me. I remember the year I dutifully bought all my Christmas presents and ignored all the comfy sweaters and warm shirts in dark colors that decked all the shelves. Two weeks later, my friend MJ and I went to spend our gift cards on those previously coveted clothes only to find the entire selection of winter wear had been replaced by pastel sleeveless shirts and colorful culottes. Sure, it was the South, but even Raleigh didn’t require cut-offs in January. A few years later, I needed a new coat in February. As I was living in Boston at the time and summer is but a brief two-week window before winter sets back in (it once snowed in May), I figured my selection would be wide and plentiful. It wasn’t. In fact, it was non-existent. However, if I was hunting for a swimsuit, well then I was in luck. In Boston. In February. WTF?

Who decides that no one needs a sweater when it is cold out? Or boots when it snows? Who decides that sandals are out of season by mid-June and that season-specific outdoor toys must be on sale before the season officially begins? Who decides that Halloween costumes must be bought with the September school supplies (that are usually hard to find by mid-August)? Why were all the Valentine’s Day crafts half-priced (and the aisles empty) a week before the fake romantic holiday? It’s just bizarre.

In my world, boots will not be sold out by December. Shorts in summer, pants in winter, and if you need special clothing for vacations, climate change, or shits and giggles, you can go to a damn specialty store. Target doesn’t need to showcase itty-bitty teeny-weeny yellow polka-dot bikinis directly across from their display of Easter chocolates! Talk about putting you off your bunny. The only weather-dependent item I have ever seen on display in direct relation to weather is the umbrella. Hmm. If it is already raining and you do not have an umbrella, then you are already wet. The umbrella is not going to make you dry. And “less wet” is really just a matter of perspective.

I’m really a simple person. I don’t need super powers (though I bet certain ones would come in handy). I don’t need Star Trek technology to become a reality. (Though food synthesizers and tricorders would certainly be helpful, the Universal Translator always bothered me. Why doesn’t everyone look like a badly dubbed kung-fu movie?) I don’t need flying cars or space travel or even the discovery that werewolves and vampire are real. But I do need to be able to buy a coat when it is cold and a sundress when it is sunny. Is that too much to ask?

Happy VD!

When I was a waitress back in the day, I had to work Valentine’s Day. I worked at Applebee’s, so it wasn’t exactly high-end dining, but still the tables were filled with couples who couldn’t afford better or didn’t know better. I was single, exhausted, and in no mood for romance, so on every check, I happily wrote “Happy VD!” in red marker. Sadly, a manager eventually caught on and made me stop.

But really, that sums up my opinion on Valentine’s Day.

In high school, you could pay $1 for a color-coded card that would be delivered to your paramour of choice during classes: red for love, pink for friend, and white for secret admirer. The popular girls got all the reds, the nerdy kids sent each other lots of pinks, and the cute boys got lots of whites from all the girls too shy to ever talk to them. Looking back, I do remember getting at least a few pink ones every year – thank god – but hating the entire process. It elevated general high-school cruelty to a heart-shaped art form.

In college, I always wore black as a defense against all the ridiculous women who dressed in red from head to toe and just bawled their eyes out if they didn’t get overpriced flowers or boxes of chocolates. One year, a friend of mine stole an entire bucket of carnations from outside a store, stood in the center of campus, and handed them out to every woman who passed by. He was a sort of romantic Robin Hood, but with long red hair and a crazy smile handing out flowers to all and sundry.

In married life, we sort of ignore it entirely. Our first Valentine’s Day together, we both snuck out of the house to, ahem, run a quick errand. Turns out, we bought each other a book, which I think sums up both our practicality and our compatibility. I put a kibosh on flower because I hate roses. He put a kibosh on going out to dinner because he hates crowds and feeling rushed.

Married with children is a little different, but in some ways, it is a distillation of my holiday feelings. The kids have little parties at school, but once home, my daughter trades in all her candy for a book. (Her choice, I swear!). I did wear a holiday-appropriate shirt, it was still black and it advocated for gay marriage. And while my husband and I did go out to dinner, breaking tradition, it was only because the kids were away with their grandparents and it seemed silly to waste the opportunity to get a meal that did not come with a sundae. We choose a small restaurant, the day before the holiday, and enjoyed ourselves immensely.

And that is the biggest lesson I wish people took away from this stupid, Hallmark created holiday. Love isn’t about planning the big moments; it is about taking advantage of the little ones.

(And for another take on the holiday, and one that stole much of my thunder and possibly the best line ever in “emptying the dishwasher is as romantic as a Shakespeare sonnet” check out http://marymeanmommy.blogspot.com/)

Hold the Pickles

It is snowing in and around Philadelphia. Again. Some more. Still. Two feet arrived in December. Another two feet arrived just five days ago. Six inches fell overnight and there is another foot or two on the horizon today. The only explanation I can find for such unprecedented levels of snowfall is that Mother Nature is pissed. Such levels of anger and punishment can only be lessened by giving her what she wants – the heads of the cast of The Jersey Shore on dirty, beer-splattered, bar trays.

The God I worship doesn’t pay a whole lot of attention to reality television. To borrow a coined phrase from my favorite website, God is in the tub. I like to think He’s more into procedurals and likes to determine whodunit without using His omniscience. It’s a good a reason as any for the glut of them on TV right now. But Mother Nature, now she’s a big fan of Survivor and The Amazing Race, likes to see her earthly wonders showed off to a wider audience. When a show focused entirely on the beauty of her shorelines was set to air, she channel hopped much higher than usual (she usually doesn’t go past PBS) and found MTV. That is when it all went wrong.

Expecting to see long strips of sandy beaches, blue(ish) water, and glorious wildlife, instead, she was faced with the horror of orange-skinned people bulging with unnatural muscle masses in unnatural places, hair glued, ironed, bumped, and gelled into submission. These people had a clear inability to speak in anything resembling a full, grammatically-correct sentence or complete a thought above a third-grade level, yet they all had a driving urge to procreate. Who were these cavemen?

If you want to look for the defining moment when Mother Nature became truly offended, look no further than the episode focusing on the GTL. If you GTL the way nature intended, then you work up a sweat out of doors, engaging in agriculture, sustenance, and good old-fashioned labor. You do not go indoors, and play with equipment to gain strength. Then, if you want a tan, viola, you have already earned one through the process of engaging in step one! These morons lived across the street from the beach and went to it exactly once. Instead, they choose to spend every morning in a tanning bed, turning them a luscious shade of Oompa-Loompa. And finally, though everyone knows that clothes smell best if left to hang in fresh sunshine, they instead washed the same three Ed Hardy shirts over and over again using the harshest chemicals to get the smell of Brut and Aqua Net out of the collars.

Those of us who actually reside in the Garden state know that the Snookies are few and far between. Not everyone aspires to look like a 40 yr-old hard-drinking divorcé who has been rode hard and put away wet – at the tender age of 22. Not everyone chooses to look as if cantaloupes have been shoved under their skin. (True New Jersey girls would prefer ripe, tomato-sized breasts that would never, ever fail the pencil test). Not everyone wears short-shorts two sizes too small, pants two sizes too big, and bedazzled t-shirts (another example of why bedazzling really is the Devil’s craft).

Thus, the only way to end the suffering of the entire state (and really, the whole region, which just means that Mother Nature can’t figure out how to change the channel and got stuck watching Real World D.C. as well) is to offer as sacrifice the ridiculous and useless cast of The Jersey Shore. I would happily end The Situation if it makes my situation better. Can you imagine if Roid Rage Ronnie and his dimwit girl-toy Sammie Stupidhead actually smooshed enough the create the ultimate Juicy-Juice head? Wouldn’t it be better for humanity in general if we were to make sure that never, ever happened? So I say to you all – bring me the heads of JWoww and Pauly (but handle gingerly as they may be highly flammable). Use your nearest duck phone and call any one of the numbers scrawled hastily on the back of toilet doors from here to Delaware – but find me that cast. (But leave Vinnie alone – he’s mostly harmless.)