Some Pig

They Have A Good Beat And You Can Dance To 'Em

You know what this blog hasn't had in a good long while?  A nice rant!  So pull up your chair, break out a cupcake or three, and settle in, cuz I'm ready to rip with not one, not two, but THREE rants in one!

Rant #1

So my long-term readers and friends are aware that I do enjoy a nice reality TV program now and again.  I like nothing more than spending my Thursday nights with the supposedly "real" housewives of Atlanta or watching Stacy and Clinton turn around a fashion disaster.  One of my faves is Dancing With the Stars.  It's the near-perfect reality TV premise.  It has everything!  Glittery costumes!  Sexy dancers!  Obscure semidemihemicelebrities of the kind who used to show up on "Hollywood Squares"!  Tension!  Drama! Action!  Plus it's one of the few reality shows - okay, the only reality show - I can actually picture myself participating in, except for the minor impediment of my non-semidemihemicelebrity status.  But really, how much of a celebrity does one have to be to get on that show?  After all, when I go out to run errands of an evening, any number of young pubescent types recognize who I am - isn't that celebrity status of a sort? ANYWAY, that's not what's rantworthy about DWTS.  What's rantworthy is what happens after the D-listers, former A-listers, retired football players and marginally well-known Olympic athletes finish dancing.  Once they're done, the formidable Len Goodman offers his opinion of their efforts.  And more often than not, the audience boos him loudly.  Why?  Because Len Goodman has the audacity to - gasp! - judge the dancers' efforts critically.  Which means that sometimes he says things that - horrors! - aren't nice!  Can you imagine???  Here's this internationally-known expert on ballroom dance, a man who's been involved in the dance world for longer than most people in the audience have been ALIVE, and he actually TAKES THE DANCERS'  EFFORTS SERIOUSLY AND CRITIQUES THEM AS SUCH.  And you know what happens?  If you listen closely, you'll notice that as Len is calling the dancers out, most of the time they're agreeing with him.  He'll say something like, "Your footwork is sloppy, you're off the beat and you faked your way through that turn," and the celebrity in question is nodding in acquiescence and saying, "yup, yup, you're right, I did," and so on.  Meanwhile the audience is booing because, hey!  They like whoever it is and they think Len's being an old meanie-pants.

Letter From A Broad, Helpful Hints Edition

Dear Homeowner,

After driving by your house twice recently, I simply must compliment you for making the best of a tricky situation.  It is difficult to keep up appearances when one uses one's front lawn as a general storage facility.  However, I don't think that sticking a small table of rather fatigued looking knick-knacks outside as well and putting up a sign that says "yard sale" by the side of the road allows you to forgo the process of actually cleaning up your yard.  I'm just sayin'.

Sincerely,
Someone Who Was Not Put Up to This By Your Neighbors, Although They Have Every Right

Dear John Paul Jones,

"Caroline," Warren said to me as he watched you trying to launch the S.S. Minnow the other day, "I don't think he consulted the owner's manual."

I gave him the stink-eye, for my mate is not one to prate about having paranormal abilities. Suddenly he's claiming omniscience?  "Why is that, dear?" I replied.

"Because generally you need wind to go sailing," he responded.  And indeed, he was right.  Perhaps you should take that under advisement before you try to go sailing on a hazy, humid, and more to the point, perfectly breezeless August afternoon.  Otherwise you might wind up, oh, I don't know - drifting aimlessly around the boat launch in front of seventy-five people or so?  Getting the keel hung up on the buoy lines marking off the swim area, perhaps?  Whoever said, "don't give up the ship," I'm pretty sure was NOT talking to you.

Fair winds and following seas!

SP

Dear Canada,

Having spent a week vacationing in your friendly climes, I must admit I have found much to admire about our northerly neighbor.  The province of Quebec strikes a lovely balance between New World convenience and European culture... which is a fancy way of saying I can get behind a place where everyone speaks with a cool accent but they use English when I run out of my high school French.  Having availed myself of your hospitality several times, along with a few chocolate croissants and a crepe or two, I have often wondered why Canadians don't suffer from the same plague of obesity that we U.S. residents are so prone to.  I'm not saying you can't find a hefty critter or two north of the forty-eighth parallel, but it is proportionately much rarer.

Well, now I know why.

After spending the night in Vermont, we bundled the girls into the car at half-past early o'clock and started off for points north.  We figured we'd snack 'em up on cereal bars, which would last long enough to get us north of the border, then stop for a proper breakfast.  We went through Checkpoint Charlie without a hitch (except for the fact that we didn't know both our passports had expired, which is a sad commentary on how little exotic adventure yours truly enjoys these days).  Then we proceeded to look for a suitable breakfast place. 

And we looked.

And we looked.

And we looked.

WTF, Canada?  What do you have against people who want to eat food?  We drove for hours - literally HOURS - on a major highway, and could not find ANYPLACE to eat that was actually open and actively serving food.  We even detoured through a fairly sizeable town, and the only thing we could find was a Tim Horton's on the wrong side of the highway.  Out of sheer desperation we wound up stopping at a convenience store for granola bars and juice, which at least stopped the ceaseless chorus of "When are we going to eat, Mommy?  Mommy, I'm hungry," with accompanying percussion (i.e., kicking my seat back).  But still, one granola bar and some juice does not a breakfast make when you've got pancakes and eggs on the brain. 

So now I know why Canadians suffer less from obesity.  It's a big country, and I'm sure you have to truck around a fair bit to get from point A to point B - and there's nothing to eat along the way!  Sheesh, you can't go five minutes in any direction on a highway around here without finding half a dozen places to eat!  That may be a little excessive, granted, but could you maybe find a happy medium before we come up for our next visit?

Thanks,

Le Cochon

PS Notice how I refrained from saying, "eh?" anywhere in that letter?  I'm so proud of me!

Dear XM Satellite Radio,

For once in my life I have only good to say about something, as regards the trip mentioned above.  We took my husband's car, the one with the XM satellite radio and the kids' music channel.  Based on a strong desire to keep the smaller passengers happy and (relatively) easy to handle, we listened to kids' music for about 80% of the ride to and from our vacation.  Let me tell you, it was nothing short of a revelation!  I got to listen to songs I haven't heard twenty zillion times before, I didn't have to buy seventeen different CDs, and I didn't ONCE feel like stabbing anyone! AND... there was NO Wiggles.  Not One. Single. Song.  (And before my readership accuses me of hating on the Wiggles, rest assured, I loves me some antipodean vocalizing, but really - haven't we all heard "Get Ready to Wiggle" a million times or more already?)  I even found myself looking forward to certain songs, and hoping they'd be played again!  Truly the best $12.95 we spent this month.

Sincerely,

A Satisfied Consumer

Not Quite Ready for Prime Time

I have terrible news.

I have a party in two weeks and I have nothing to wear.

This would not be a big deal, except that this party is being hosted by, and attended by, relatives of Warren's.  Warren's relatives, as a collective group, are tall, willowy, gracious, outgoing, professionally accomplished, personally talented and socially adept.  I, on the other hand, am short, squat, and socially awkward.  I teach eighth grade for a living and my most noteworthy talent seems to be writing down the snarky things I say in my head for other people to read, a habit for which I receive exactly no remuneration or wide-scale public acclaim.  On top of that, I suck at being sociable at cocktail parties where I don't know the majority of the attendees. I can't hear well when there are a million other people talking around me, so my "small talk" tends to consist of me yelling, "Excuse me?" and "What?" a lot to someone who pretty much didn't want to talk to me in the first place.  Then I wind up standing somewhere on the sidelines, getting stepped on a zillion times since people don't tend to look down a whole lot when they're looking around for the bar. 

As the joke goes, Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?

At the ripe old age of forty-one, I have made peace with most of my personal flaws and foibles.  I have learned to live with the fact that I'm an introvert. I do not usually fare well in social gatherings if I don't already know most of the people there.  I also don't have any sense of how to dress for those occasions that fall outside the three categories of things for which I have an internal dress code, those being work, weekends, and weddings.  For example, my friend Toasty invited me to her lovely daughter's first birthday party last year, which was a huge neighborhood shindy involving ideas I shamelessly poached for my own daughter's fifth birthday extravaganza.  It was held on a weekend, so I arrived in my usual Saturday mufti of shorts, t-shirt, and athletic sandals, with an air of dishevelment about the hair and frenzy about the eyes, if I remember correctly.  Apparently I was the only mom who didn't get the memo to dress in a breezy cotton sundress accessorized with a sweater and cute dressy sandals, because that's what every other mother at the party was wearing.  I mean, damn! Is there some kind of sub rosa woman-to-woman grapevine that spreads the dress code through nonverbal communication?  "Psst.  We're all wearing capris and Indian-print tops to the preschool picnic.  Pass it on!"  How is it that everyone else figures these things out and I can't?  Did I miss the boat by not joining a sorority in college?  Did someone pass out PIN codes to unlock the door to middle-class momhood and I forgot to write it down??  What am I doing wrong???

So now I have to figure out something to wear that is dressy, but not too dressy, and stylish, or at least not hopelessly out of date.  And then I have to wear it for several hours, preferably without spilling something down my front.  And I have to make sparkling conversation while hoping and praying that my adorably-dressed children aren't wetting themselves, eating all the canapes, getting into fights with their cousins, or some combination of the above.  Just thinking about all of this is making me slightly queasy.  Maybe I can hire Toasty to be my cocktail-party stunt double!  She seems to know what to wear, say, and do in these situations.  Then I can stay home in my JCPenney's flannel pj pants and hunt through the TV listings for Real Housewives reruns while she dazzles everyone with my social acumen.  It's a win-win! 

Being ever the optimist, I can see one silver lining around this particular cloud.  At least I am not a member of the extended Obama/Robinson clan, because being an introverted underachiever at their family reunions must REALLY suck!  Imagine that conversation:  "Hi, Michelle!" [awkward silence] "So, um, how's the White House treating you?"  [longer and even more awkward pause] "Me?  Well, I'm, uh, still blogging.  Yep, I passed the 500-post mark recently!  I don't suppose you've had time to read my latest post, have you?  No?  Well, you're busy. What?  WHAT?  I can't hear you very well.  I'm just going to, uh - you'll excuse me - yeah!  Let's get together sometime!  My calendar's pretty open.  Good talking to you!"

It Will FEEL Like Eternity, Anyway

For those of you who keep track of such things, here's a news flash:  I am officially appalled at People magazine.

Given that my usual reading pattern consists of perusing old copies while I'm on the exercise bike at the gym, my defection is not going to change their circulation figures much.  But on a moral and philosophical level, I feel obligated to voice my displeasure in this public forum.  My ire was provoked after coming across this article last week.  It's a fairly middle-of-the-road article about a semi-sorta-famous Melissa I always have a hard time placing out of context (Gilbert?  Naah, that was Little House on the Prairie eons ago.  Rivers?  Nope, this Melissa doesn't have a freakishly large head.  Oh yeah, that Sabrina girl!).  Anyhoo, MJH went and got fat thanks to having two kids, then went on a diet and got a People magazine cover (clearly she is far lower down on the celebrity scale than Kirstie Alley, who got a cover story for just announcing she's going on a diet, but reality is cruel sometimes).  It was a very typical People former-fat-person story, blah blah overweight blah blah low self-esteem, yada yada private trainer personal nutritionist blabitty blah, so I was only half-reading it until I looked at the sidebar that describes the miraculous diet.  Here is what this woman eats in an average day:

• A protein shake for breakfast (with flax seeds!)
• A turkey wrap for lunch
• Salmon or halibut for dinner

Letter From A Broad, Celebreality Edition

Dear Bret Michaels,

First, a confession:  I am not a regular viewer of your Rock of Love series, but I have discussed it with my coworkers and surfed around the show's website enough that I have gotten the general hang of things.  I must say, what I have learned alarms me not a little.  While it's true that you don't know me and didn't ask for my advice, I would be remiss if I didn't alert you to what my husband with the MBA would call a serious flaw in your business plan.  You purport to be conducting your private affairs in full sight of the viewing public because you are searching for that one special someone with whom you can share your dreams, your hopes, your hair products.  While I don't doubt the sincerity of your efforts - well, okay, actually I *do* doubt the sincerity of your efforts, but we'll deal with that later on - your methodology is a little suspect.  Why?  Simply put, the very qualities that make someone a good life mate (maturity, predictability, emotional stability, a lack of homicidal impulses) make for crappy reality TV.  People don't watch your show to see you make a meaningful connection with a fellow human being on an emotional and intellectual level; they tune in to see crazy dames with unrealistically large implants and a surfeit of tattoos catfight over you.  The women selected as contestants on your show seem to trend heavily toward bartenders, "lingerie models," and practitioners of the burlesque arts.  While I'm sure all these ladies are genuinely interested in you for yourself and not for your ability to give them fifteen minutes of notoriety (cough, cough), they seem to share a certain lack of, er, equilibrium, let's say.  Call me naive, but somehow I don't think someone who is willing to dump salsa all over a fellow contestant's belongings will make a good life mate, hmmm?

Letter From A Broad: Wedding Edition

Dear Bride-To-Be,

So you're betrothed.  Congratulations!  Mazel tov!  Bonne chance!  Many happy returns of the day!  I'm so glad that some other suckers besides me and Warren two souls such as you and your intended are stupid enough to get snookered into getting hitched are so deeply in love that you want to join together as one for eternity.  As mentioned before, congrats, good luck, and so forth and so on.

Having said that, now it's time for some straight talk.  Given that it's March, one of the most unattractive months of the year here in the frozen North, chances are likely that your impending nuptials are at least three months and possibly as much as five to six months away.  Since we are looking at quite a bit of time between now and the chiming of the wedding bells, may I offer a little friendly advice?  Whenever someone who falls into the category of "friendly acquaintance" asks you how you are or what you've been doing, please keep all wedding-related responses to one, possibly two sentences, or you run the risk of being pegged as a bridal bore.  The appropriate response to a casual "how you doing?" is, "fine, thanks," not, "Oh my God!  I'm so stressed out!  The DJ I hired for the reception just told me that his cousin's decided to get married, and he promised to do her wedding years ago but she just picked the same weekend we did, and he said he'd totally refund all of our deposit and he's got a couple references for us but I told him I wasn't interested in changing DJs now when it's only x weeks until the wedding and then my fiance said..." because, frankly?  I stopped caring about ten subordinate clauses ago.  The proper etiquette, since you probably have spent more time thinking about proper etiquette since you got engaged than you have spent, um, EVER BEFORE IN YOUR LIFE, is as follows:

Friendly Acquaintance With No Stake In Your Wedding:  "So how are you doing?"

Blushing Bride-to-Be (i.e., you): "Oh, fine!"

FAWNSIYW: "Do anything fun over the weekend?"

BBtB:  "Oh, you know, wedding stuff."

Your FAWNSIYW will then do one of two things:  Either s/he will say, "oh, that's nice," or some other nonresponse of that ilk, in which case that's your cue to go back to griping about winter and the lousy coffee in the break room; or s/he will make some kind of overture to tell him/her more, in which case by all means, launch right into your story about how you went to the caterer's this past weekend and the napkins that they promised would match your bridesmaids' dresses turned out to be more a green-blue shade teal than a blue-green shade of teal and now you have to go back and order different napkins. 

As your friendly acquaintance, there are really only two things I care about:  Am I invited or not? If I am invited, then I care about two other things:  Is there an open bar, and what flavor is the cake?  (NB:  The hoped-for answers are, "open" and "chocolate".) The only exemption to this is stories about wedding drama.  I likes me a good slow-motion train wreck as much as anyone else, so I am always open to hearing stories about wedding drama, the more operatic, the better.  Did your bitchy cousin who's only in the wedding party because  your mom's side of the family will boycott your wedding if she's not in it stomp off in a huff because you won't seat her babydaddy with the prison tats at the head table?  I am all ears.  I would LOVE to hear your story about how your future mother-in-law, who refers to her OTHER daughter-in-law as "the daughter I never had," cried through your entire engagement party because she said she was "losing her son to that other family".  Drunken uncles, ludicrous wedding planners, snotty dress fitters, all are entertaining bit players in the reality TV of life.   (While I prided myself on being of reasonably sound mind during the planning phase of the SP nuptials, I was not totally immune to the wedding wack-out.  At one point I went running into the World Language department office and burst into tears because I was convinced I hated my wedding dress.  What made this all the more dramatic was, a) the fact that the dress had been my mother's; and, b) that it was basically too late to shop for, pick out, and alter a different dress.  Fortunately, I recovered my mental equilibrium and went on to wear what was a perfectly lovely dress that suited the location and the time of year.  So really it was a tempest in a teapot, but isn't most wedding drama?)

Now that you are aware of this problem, you may be wondering, "Have I become a bridal bore?"  Here's a quick test:  Do your work friends scatter to their cubicles when they see you coming down the hall with yet another Bride's magazine in hand?  Do the people with whom you usually lunch disappear, mumbling something about "errands" and "phone calls" and "maybe I'll see you tomorrow" when you raise the topic of mother's dresses?  Does your fiance fall asleep right in the middle of your gripping story about the latest visit to the florist's?  If you answered "yes" to any of the above, then the answer is a big, fat, hairy YES, YOU ARE.  And my advice to you is, SHUT UP ABOUT YOUR DAMN WEDDING ALREADY. 

Yours,

Some Pig

P.S. A gentle warning:  Should you fail to heed this advice, you are probably a prime candidate for my next letter, titled "Please Keep Your Pregnancy News to Yourself."

In Which I Have Good Ideas

Good Idea #1

You may remember quite some time ago when I shared the story of how we repainted a number of rooms in our house, including the girls' bathroom.  Among other things, I was fretting about what I could do to mitigate the unrelentingly pink, um, pinkness of that particular room.  Now, I am usually not one to come up with clever ideas around household decor, and my efforts to be stylish often just fall flat.  For example, Warren's cousin painted one of the bathrooms in her house a sort of an oatmeal-y tan color with lighter tan towels and silver bath accessories, and the effect was all very House Beautiful.  Had I tried the same, the effect would have been far more "Holiday Inn," or perhaps more accurately, "cheap condo the builder painted one neutral color".  [Of course, this is the same cousin who has attained great professional success while maintaining a house and a social schedule that would put both Martha Stewart and Laetitia Baldridge to shame, all while being so friendly and down-to-earth that one can't help liking her even as one's guts are twisting into knots with jealousy.  Or so I imagine.  Not that I feel that way, you see, it's just that I can see how other people might feel that way.  Ahem.]

So anyway, quite unexpectedly I had an idea!  We needed a towel rack in the room, and I decided I wanted something more colorful and kid-friendly than a regular towel rack. I couldn't find anything that quite fit that bill, so we bought a peg rack and some sample paint and painted it a bright blue-green.  Then - and here's where the genius idea comes in - I had the inspiration to line up the girls' tub toys along the shelf part of the peg rack and waalah!  Look how cute!  Now I can hang up different colored towels on the pegs, which helps distract from the - er, 'vibrant' pink of the walls, and the ducks and tugboats fit the child theme of the room.  Of course, this idea does have a built-in half life of about six years tops before the kids totally outgrow the tub toy theme, upon which time I will either have to redo the room or come up with some other near-genius inspiration to rescue us from a repainting job.  If you have any ideas, please, by all means, share them!

Letter From A Broad, Pop Icon Edition

Dear Madonna,

We need to talk.

I realize I'm not the most obvious choice to be having this conversation with you.  You probably were expecting my friend Elaine, the woman who plans to make a fortune playing accordion renditions of your greatest hits.  Or my other friend Madge, the woman whose blog name is a play on your British nickname. Or even my friend Michael, the one who went into mourning when you had to cancel one of your Blond Ambition tour dates and whose friends sent flowers and notes of condolence to him because he was so upset.  But really, doesn't it make sense that this would come from someone like me, someone who has liked and admired you ever since your Desperately Seeking Susan, Cheetos-and-jelly-bracelets days, but who never claimed to love you with the blind adoration of the aforementioned fans?  I think their objectivity has been blinded by their adoration, and so that leaves it to me to bring this up.

Madonna, my friend, you've had an outstanding run, but it's time to start thinking about the end game  here. Let's face facts: We're not the spring chickens we once were.  Yeah, I know it's hard to imagine that we're reaching that age the women's mags call "and beyond!", as in, "How to Look Your Best in Your 20's ... 30's ... 40's ... and beyond!"  Hey, I'm still surprised every time I catch sight of the middle-aged lady in the big mirror during Zumba class, and I never got to look the way you did when I was in my 20's and 30's.  You know that fake road sign in the opening of What Not to Wear? The one that says "No Miniskirts After 35"?  It took many reruns before it hit me (like a blow to the stomach) that that message was meant for ME.  I've seen your latest tour photos, and you still look ready to kick ass and take names, but ... well, the inevitable is coming.  50 may be the new 40 and 40 may be the new 30, but there comes a point when it doesn't matter what's the new what anymore. You and I have both had two kids, and honey, I don't care how good your Pilates trainer is, after a couple of pregnancies things that used to live up north start heading south, both literally AND figuratively (figuratively! ha!  body shape pun!).  Let's just say that a couple of years ago, it was hot when you french-kissed the latest pretender to the pop queen throne.  If you were to do that now, however, you'd have to suck face with Miley Cyrus, and the ick factor on that is just exponentially higher than it was when you smooched with La Spears. Face it, we're old enough to be Hannah Montana's mother; you don't really want to be battling her for market share, do you?

So let's get down to brass tacks.  You're quickly advancing to the point in the road where you're going to have to make a choice between two options:  Aging Gracefully and Fighting Desperately.  As the woman who became famous for reinvention, you're going to have to find one more transformation in you: From being "of  the moment" to "timeless". You stopped channeling Marilyn Monroe a long time ago, now it's time to search for your inner Grace Kelly.  And I have to say, I'm worried about you, Madge.  Let's take a gander at this pictorial evidence over here for starters.  The top hat?  The sparkly skull guitar  strap?  I'm not feeling it, especially not the skull motif (which I think is uber-stupid and best left to the 13-year-old skateboarders who started it).  And your face ... oh dear.  Somehow the round face you used to have in your "Like a Virgin" days has been replaced by something that looks like you had half an orange shoved under your skin on either side of your nose. To be brutally honest, Madge, dear, some of your most recent photos have had a bit of an "I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille," air about them. Do I really need to remind you what happens when women desperate to hang onto the illusion of youth go in for indiscriminate plastic surgery?  Okay, here it is:

 

Dear Lord, please don't make me have to go through that again. That's the BEST photo I could find of that woman, too - you should've seen the others!

So now we need to chat about what image is, in fact, suitable for us women "of a certain age" (as the French like to say).  Personally, I think you've fought your last match in the boxing getup.  It's mind-boggling to think that someone older than I am is fit enough to strut around on stage in thigh-high boots and a leotard, but you're reaching the age when you need a little meat on your bones or you start looking like a scalded chicken (viz. Ms. Van Ark and her sternum above).  You don't have to do a double gainer into the HoHos, but how about relaxing a bit on the dietary front?  Have a glass of milk and a cookie once in awhile; I recommend a nice homemade chocolate chip with butter and nuts in it.  Rethink the dress code, too, away from "Lourdes and I raid each other's wardrobes," to "I won't be embarrassed to see pictures of myself in this five years from now." Before you freak out, I'm not telling you to give up being stylish.  Shoot, you and Michelle Obama are almost contemporaries, and I don't see anyone referring to her as frumpy, dowdy, or schlumpadinka-like. Admitting you're not a mere lass of 30 doesn't mean you can't be fashionable and glam and all those good things.  Take a gander at this:

 

That's Eartha Kitt, and she looked smashing, didn't she?  I think she had some work done, but even so, she kept it to a minimum so that she still looked like herself as she aged into her eighties:

 

See?  That's not so bad, is it?  And think of the other women I'd put in the category of "Classy Broads":  Catherine Deneuve!  Sophia Loren!  Diane Keaton!  I'll even put Liza Minelli, despite her failed marriage to that freak show ex-husband of hers, in this category too!  Now look at the flip side:  Zsa Zsa Gabor.  Joan and Jackie Collins.  Pamela Anderson.  Priscilla Presley.  Fighting the clock, every one of them, and look how far that's gotten them.

Okay, I know you don't want to be the Grande Old Dame of anything.  You want to go on being on top of the game and at the top of your form.  But take it from someone who, admittedly, never attained the heights you have and had only a short distance to fall:  It's not that bad down here.  It's not like the fashion police are going to grab you and force you into a pair of mom jeans as soon as you admit you're middle-aged.  Once you finally admit it to yourself you may even find it liberating to be middle-aged!  You can walk around without sucking in your stomach all the time for starters!  You get to pass over clothes that may be trendy but look really stupid and no one expects you to wear them anyway!  You even get to say, "that's stupid - I'm not wearing that" in your out-loud voice!  You can admit that high heeled shoes hurt, thong underwear is uncomfortable, and ultra-low-cut jeans are only meant for girls under the age of 15!  You can wear a bathing suit that covers more than 2.5 square inches of flesh to the beach, which means you can actually walk around or even - gasp - SWIM without violating decency laws!  You can choose your bras based on comfort and support, not sex appeal!  I could go on, but you get the gist. 

Well, I'm glad we had this little chat.  I'll leave you with this one last thought: Do you want to be remembered as, "Madonna, the woman who changed what it meant to be a female pop star forever," or, "Madonna, the once-trendy queen of the pop music scene who became a parody of herself"?  You think that over while I put the milk in the coldest part of the fridge and stir up another batch of those chocolate chip cookies I mentioned earlier. 

Your pal,

Some Pig

In Which I Prove (Yet Again) That I Am No One's Model of Christian Charity UPDATED

Today I realized that I have some New Year's resolving to make, whether I like it or not, mostly around being a better (i.e., less judgmental, more accepting) person. I realized this at church.  [Yeah, I get the irony around the agnostic-leaning-atheist having an epiphany (ha! faith-based wordplay!) at church.  Shut up.  It's the Unitarian church, so it's not, like, religious or anything.] This bolt from the blue came to me based on two recent incidences, to wit:

Incidence #1

We went away over New Year's to a condo resort that had a pool, primarily because we knew that the pool would tire out entertain the kids even if the weather was too cold to go outside for long. Picture this:  I am in the ladies' locker room, trying to keep the wet suits away from the dry towels, prevent the dry clothes from falling onto the wet floor, and apply the dry towels and subsequently the dry clothes to the wet kids.  Just to complete the picture, I am clad solely in my panties, all the better to avoid my getting all wet in the process.  The door opens, and a woman walks into the locker room accompanied by her two kids, one girl and one - omigod - boy.  A boy who is roughly as tall as his mother's shoulder, by the way, I'm not talking about a little kid here by a long shot. And this is a boy who is now getting an eyeful of my not-very-clothed self in all its damp, flabby glory.  The mom is obviously aware of the potential - oh, okay - existing awkwardness of the situation, because she rushes them along to get in the nearest shower-cum-changing stall in double-quick time, but you know what?  I don't care.  I'm p*ssed off.  When I'm in the women's locker room, and I'm naked and my girls are naked and I'm trying to pull everything together, the last thing I want is to worry about what gender of kid is going to come waltzing through that door.  Now, of course I don't mind the little ones coming in.  To them it's all the same anyway.  But can we as a society possibly agree on some kind of sign that demarcates the point at which our sons are not welcome in the ladies' room?  To me, four years old is fine.  Five and six is acceptable.  But when we start looking at seven and eight year old boys sharing space with my naked self, I ain't cool with that.  (That's my best guess for the age of the kid I inadvertently flashed, if that makes a difference to any of you.)  There were individual bathrooms right outside the pool area that this kid could have changed in, or he could have come with his suit under his clothes and avoided half the problem for starters.  If Mom doesn't want her son going alone into the men's locker room to shower, the kid can go straight in the pool without washing down first, use the bathroom to change, and shower at home later.  

Now, I've read about this very issue on other blogs and message boards, and 99.9% of the posters and respondents have been mothers of boys whose basic outlook is that their kids' safety comes first and they will bring their school-aged sons in the ladies' rooms with them as long as they feel they need to.  I'm well aware that I don't have sons and I don't know how I would feel about this situation.  However, let me present the other side:  I have two little girls and I don't want them (OR ME) to be seen, unclothed, in spaces that are specifically intended for women to use, by strange boys who are old enough to know the difference between naked and dressed.  Perhaps this is a good litmus test:  Think about your son's best friend who's his same age. Would you want to be getting dressed somewhere and have that kid walk in on you? 

Now, moving rapidly along to...

Incidence #2

I'm at church, which for me means I am in the playroom with Celeste.  Celeste is both a) wiggly, and b) reluctant to be left with strangers (For which read, cries hysterically and uncontrollably for the entire time she's left.  As in, for HOURS), so one of us has to take her somewhere where she won't disrupt everyone else and then stay with her.  I take her to the nursery, open the door, and see the usual assortment of toddlers, preschoolers...

... and a pair of brothers, aged four 1/2 and six years old.  (Sorry, men.  I realize both these incidences involve bearers of the Y chromosome.  I swear it's just coincidence.  I love men.  Really.  I even married one.)

Now, this room is small.  It is intended for small people.  There's the low-to-the-ground table, the teeny-tiny chairs, the wee toys meant for little hands.  It's called a NURSERY, which to me implies LITTLE kids.  And smack-dab in the middle of the babies and toddlers and young preschoolers are these two boys who are tall and large for their ages and rambunctious.  From what I could see, the babysitters who run the room weren't making the boys aware of the need to be sensitive to the little kids.  For example, they created an elaborate room out of cardboard blocks for their Webkinz, on the floor, right in the middle of the toy area, so every other child was forced to go around it and usually wound up knocking several blocks over.  Then, when they did knock over the blocks, one of the boys would go rushing over to fix the wall, shrieking, "don't touch it!" in the faces of these much younger kids.  Would India do that?  Hell yeah.  But if I were there, she'd immediately be reminded of her role as the older and wiser "big girl" in a room full of little children, and I'd hope any adult responsible for the good of the group as a whole would do the same thing.  (Actually, if I were there, India wouldn't set up a play space the other kids couldn't touch in the middle of the floor to begin with, but that's another issue.)  THEN the younger boy actually physically pushed a 15 month old toddler - PUSHED him down to the floor THREE times - because the toddler had knocked over some of the blocks.

Um, WHAT?!?!

Because the two babysitters and the toddler's mother were there, I didn't do anything.  They all made disapproving "no, no, we don't do that," comments to the boy, the kind grownups make to kids when you don't have any authority over them.  What I wanted to do, but didn't, was grab the kid by the hand and make him look me in the eye.  Then, in my best old-school-teacher voice and using my coldest of cold stares, I would have told him that it is NOT acceptable for a bigger boy to push a littler boy like that EVER, and if he didn't want the little kids touching his blocks he needed to NOT put them right in the middle of the floor, and he would have two minutes to decide if he wanted to set up his blocks somewhere else or have me put them away so the little kids would have room to play.  

But I didn't.  Instead, I sat there and seethed for the rest of the service, in a very poor display of un-forgiving and not-forgetting.  Perhaps I shouldn't let it bother me, but it does.  I'm still going back and forth over whether or not to call the Sunday school director and tell her about it. Maybe my range of what I consider acceptable behavior in little kids is skewed because I work with older kids who don't do those things.  Maybe I'm less tolerant than I should be because I'm a teacher and I get to step in when I see kids misbehaving in my professional life.  Still,  I just can't stand watching kids behave poorly.  It makes my teeth hurt.  In fact, the whole situation pissed me off from the get-go, mostly because I felt it was inappropriate to have older kids in the little kids' classroom, but that is not my call and I need to let that one go.  And, yes, I do appreciate the intense irony of being in church and not feeling very charitable toward my fellow man, or boy in this case.  Perhaps I can reconcile myself to my judgmental nature in a way that will encourage me to be more accepting of my fellow human beings.  Here's what I've come up with so far for ideas:

I will be less judgmental of other people if they will be less stupid. (Hm. Seems to be missing a certain element of humility here.)

God (Buddha, Shiva, Allah - take your pick) grant me the serenity to accept the muffin-headedness I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can without using four-letter words to describe how wrong they are when they don't agree with me, and the wisdom to know the difference. (Better, but still somehow a little self-centered)

Rule #1:  I am right.

Rule #2:  When I am wrong, see rule #1. (Totally moving in the wrong direction)

Caroline, no one outside of your blog readers gives a damn about what you think.  (I think I've got it!)

***

I finally got in touch with the Sunday School director today.  We had one of those politely coded conversations where the speaker's meaning was carefully wrapped in layers of delicate language, all the better to convey unpleasant sentiments in pleasant tones.  For example:

Me:  Some things happened in the nursery on Sunday that I wasn't entirely comfortable with and I have a few concerns I'd like to talk about.  (Translation:  WTF?)

Sunday School director:  Well, we don't have a specific policy about which children are allowed in the nursery, because I have to make sure all the children feel safe and welcome in church.  (Translation: Those kids are going to be in the nursery again. Suck it up and deal.)

She was very open to listening to my concerns, and she did say several times that inappropriate behavior wasn't acceptable and would not be tolerated.  She promised to speak to the child care providers, and more importantly, to the boys' parents.  So either things will be taken care of and nothing more will happen, or I will be posting later about my follow-up call.  Stay tuned!

Remember, You Heard It Here First UPDATED

This?  Right here?  Is precisely why I don't bother playing the lottery. -CCS

Being a social studies teacher (US History, primarily), I'm following the presidential election veepstakes closely.  I thought for sure Obama was going to announce his pick today, and he didn't.  So I just want to go on record now as saying, I have a feeling in my gut that he's going with Hill.

There are, at last count, about a gazillion political blogs offering much more insightful and intelligent commentary than I would be capable of mustering here, so I usually leave politics aside in favor of the fascinating (snort) minutia of life chez Pig.  I will suspend that general policy long enough to say here that I've been around the block with Hillary.  Until about two months ago, the very notion of her sniffing around the ticket was anathema to me.  But now that a little time has passed and perspective has been restored, I think she'd be an excellent pick for the ticket. 

We shall see what we shall see.  However, I'm placing no bets on this.  The last election bet I placed was with Warren.  I bet him that George W. would beat Gore - again, based on nothing but a gut feeling (certainly NOT based on how *I* voted).  I've never been so sorry to win a bet in all my life, and I don't want to jinx anything now.