"I wish I was getting married again," mourned my coworker, a woman who is not known for her romantic yearnings. "Pinterest wasn't around when I got married!"
"I know!" chimed the other female coworker. "I got totally gypped! I want to plan my wedding all over again, since I didn't get to plan it on Pinterest!"
The lone, lorn male coworker in the room looked like he wanted to commit hara-kiri with his correcting pen. That, or move into an armchair in front a TV broadcasting the NFL 24/7 and never leave.
So let me get this straight - we have the ability to disseminate knowledge instantaneously, on a level and scope never before known in human existence, and we want to use it to... plan weddings. Excellent. We ARE ancient Rome, just with on-line bulletin boards.
So have you heard about 5o Shades of Grey? Or is it Gray? E-grey or A-gray? Whatevs. Anyway, in case you're NOT a middle-aged wife and mother, 5o Shades of Grey is an e-book that started as Twilight fanfic and then became a huge best-seller in its own right among the aforementioned mommy crowd. It's gained a ton of notoriety because in addition to being a capital-R Romance, it's also about The Sex. And not just sex-sex, but naughty sex. Go Google "BDSM" if you want to know more about that element of it. Anyway, 50 SOG caught the attention of the New York Times (the business news part, not the Review of Books part, so that tells you something right there. "I think you should read this," Warren told me, handing me the article and leering suggestively. "I do not want to read that book," I snapped back, "it sounds stupid." Then one of my fellow book club members, the investigative reporter who interviews murderers for fun, suggested it for our next meeting. What the hell, I figured, who am I to argue with the murderer-interviewing lady? So, much to Warren's initial delight, we read the damned thing.
So what is wrong with 50 Shades of Grey? It doesn't just require "willing suspension of disbelief," (which is a VERY FAMOUS QUOTE by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who is a SUPER FAMOUS PERSON, for any of you haters who think I make up my famous quotes that EVERYONE'S heard of). No, 50 Shades of Grey requires that you deck disbelief in the nutsack, hog-tie it while it's still doubled over in pain, truss it up with a few of those plastic zip-ties the male protagonist seems to like so much, and then stuff it in the hall closet for the duration. The disbelief starts with said male protagonist, who is a supposed genius multizillionaire money financial business-type person, and who is also an arrogant, cold, withholding @sshole (a la Edward in the Twilight series, hence the fanfic connection) AND is also drop-dead gorgeous AND is all of about twenty-seven years old. See what I mean? ONE of those elements I could take, but all FOUR? I mean, yeah, I made a cottage industry out of dating unsuitable jerks when I was in my 20's, so I know those are out there by the truckload, but the rest of it gets to be so unlikely as to be laughable. I believe there are arrogant richy-rich business tycoons out there, but in my (admittedly limited) experience, most of them are fifty-four and look like frogs, even if they think they're the handsome prince. Then there's the fact that Grey blatantly rips off the Bella Swan character for the female protagonist, and then makes her even more passively annoying than the original. Seriously, how whiny can one character get? "Oh, I'm so useless, I don't do anything, all I do is study and think about how to turn down all the unwelcome advances from every guy I meet." I wanted to slap her across the face (although it turns out she liked that kinda action a little too much), buy her the collected works of Germaine Greer, and force her to join something already - Camp Fire Girls, the Rotary, anything that would get her out of her freaking house! In addition to being basically housebound, Whiny makes it to senior year of college without having ever kissed a boy or gone on a bender. Hey, I know the latest research (which I can't be arsed to go find) claims that college students are actually far less libidinous and licentious than generally imagined, but really, nothing? By age twenty-one??? Not one unfortunate encounter with grain alcohol punch during freshman orientation, not a single regrettable incident with a Sig Ep at a Heaven and Hell party, nothing??? I call shenanigans on that, I say, SHENANIGANS ON THAT.
Then there's The Sex. This book became notorious for the author's heavy reliance on, um, purple prose to describe the process of making the double-backed beast than for anything else. But even with The Sex, the book is just...bad. Shouldn't erotica have the effect of actually making the reader want to have The Sex? If so, this book is a great argument for abstinence, the ultimate form of birth control. There's one bedroom scene where whatsisface richy-rich guy fills his mouth with cold white wine and then spits it into Whiny's mouth while they're Doing It and it's supposed to be terribly erotic, but meanwhile, all I can think is, "EEEEWWWWW, BACKWASH!" Because eight thousand years ago, when I was attending Podunky Region High School, we had a Big Thing about backwash. If you asked a friend for a sip of the Hi-C Fruit Punch or Diet Pepsi that she got from the vending machines (which were right there in the cafeteria, another sign of bygone days), chances are the first statement out of her mouth would be, "Okay, but no backwash." This meant that after you took your sip, you were supposed to slurp on the can to get that last little bit of drink that gets caught in the rim and has TOUCHED YOUR MOUTH OH GROSS. Of course, we could have just not shared drinks, but that would be too easy, wouldn't it? Okay, that's ancient history, I know, but the point is, that scene evoked someone drinking a big gulp of too-warm white wine diluted with someone else's loogies, which makes me gag a little just writing about it. It's hard to get a warm glow in the pants when there's a churning sensation in the gut, know what I mean? Take it from me, it's a bad sign when you're reading an erotic novel and you deliberately start skipping the sex scenes because they're repetitive and dull. Even the main character getting a riding crop to the saucebox wasn't enough to redeem this book.
The worst part about this whole phenomenon is that it proves no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public (oh look! Another famous saying!!!). There are thousands of women out there who are actually reading it for reals. And they're saying it's saved their marriages! Apparently, reading about two highly unlikely characters doing redonculous things is enough to bring the bloom back to the rose and make the ole ball'n'chain look like the Handsome Prince once again. To which I say, what is wrong with people?!? There's not even a good subplot in this book! There's not one single character who's even reasonably believable, no Team Jacob equivalent to keep the reader engaged! Honestly, it's a sad, sad state of affairs when this is what America needs to keep the sanctity of marriage intact.
P.S. If you want the TL;DR version of this post, my friend Natalie announced at book club, "I couldn't finish reading it. It was written in crayon." Or you can just do what everyone else is doing and watch Ellen DeGeneris recording the audiobook. Enjoy!
I'm choreographing the middle school musical, y'all! Yeah, I'm familiar with phrase "glutton for punishment," why do you ask????
As I described to my Facebook peeps earlier in the process, choreographing middle schoolers is like herding cats. Cats with ADD. Cats with ADD who forgot their meds, and who just chugged a gallon of Mountain Dew. WHEEEE! LET'S DANCE! OH LOOK - SOMETHING SHINY!!!! I must be nuts.
Admittedly, I did this to myself. I've wanted to choreograph a musical ever since I saw All That Jazz at a very impressionable age, mostly because I love the idea of waking up, looking in the mirror and yelling, "Showtime!" at myself every day, the way the Bob Fosse guy did in that movie. (An aside: My parents, of all people, took me and my sister to see All That Jazz in the movie theeyayter when it came out in 1979; after all, what's more suitable for your impressionable preadolescent daughters to see than a film about a dipsomaniacal, pill-popping sex addict working himself to death? On the other hand, it was the '70s, so perhaps that looked like wholesome family fare in the era of key parties and coke binges; what the hell do I know, anyway?) Besides, I coached JV cheerleaders for years, and they're barely one step removed from middle school themselves, right? Ha. Little did I know. Let's just say that middle schoolers aren't known for their keen insight into themselves, or their ability to view their own efforts objectively, or even their ability to know what the hell their limbs are doing at any given moment in time. As a result, we have a lot of discussions that run along the lines of, LADIES! PLEASE PUT YOUR FEET TOGETHER. TOGETHER. YOUR FEET. THOSE THINGS AT THE END OF YOUR LEGS? MOVE THEM SO THEY ARE TOUCHING. ALL OF YOU. LOOK DOWN. LOOK. DOWN. AT. YOUR. FEET. et cetera, ad nauseam, ad infinitum. And no matter how many directions I give, one little Martha Graham is standing in the middle of the kick line, looking like a member of that famous Irish family, the O'Blivious, as my sainted dad likes to say. Seriously, no matter how much I remind them to focus! and look! and count! in their heads and not out loud!, there is always one kid who looks for all the world like she's waiting for a bus and just happened to have wandered into the middle of a dance rehearsal. What's more, as soon as my eagle eye turns from them for the briefest microsecond, all hell breaks loose. Yesterday, I turned my head long enough to answer a question, and in the time it took me to answer a simple query, all discipline and decorum had evaporated. Half the girls had wandered off their marks, two girls were swinging one another around in circles, and a couple of 'em were standing around looking dazed, as if they had just woken up and realized that this was not, in fact, the bus stop. It took me five minutes to get them back from a five-second mental lapse, and that was doing pretty well.
So, just to get us all in the mood for Showtime!, I leave you with a montage of clips from the aforementioned movie... if only so you can bask in the whuck-tasticness that was 1970's cinema.
I like the ciggie-in-the-shower shot.
I love the reference to casual sex and the foul language. I wonder if the 11-year-old me noticed it.
And this? This is just bizarre. That was one weird decade, to say the least.
So what does our heroine do with herself of a Sunday, you may be wondering. Or actually, you probably don't care at all, but since it's my blog post and I need an opening, this is what you get; you can have a giant helping of Take It or Leave It on the side if you wish, too.
Here is a list of what I have done with my day so far:
Got up
Forced children to eat, get dressed, brush teeth and comb hair
Herded children into coats, boots, hats, and mittens for trip to church
Taught Sunday School
Gathered up children for return engagement with aforementioned coats, et. al.
Brought children home (with stop along the way to procure present for birthday party)
Cleaned kitchen while Child #1 was supposedly cleaning her room
Made lunch for Child #2
Informed Child #1 that making paper flowers while listening to an audiobook did not qualify as "cleaning up your room," and that her attendance at the highly-desirable birthday party was incumbent upon her actually cleaning up her room.
Weathered floods of tears and wails of child claiming, "I don't know how to clean my room," (which is complete and utter horsesh!t because we go through this rigmarole every time I ask her to clean her room, and I mean every. single. time.) by giving distinct, separate orders for every motion she needed to make ("Now pick up the clothes... ALL your clothes...now make two piles... put the clean pile away...no, you have to put them in the appropriate drawer...because I said is why...now put the dirty pile in the laundry...ad infinitum, ad nauseam.)
Gathered up Child #1, laundry detergent, and ginormous bedspread for trip to 1) birthday party; followed by 2) laundromat
Dropped off Child #1 at part and proceeded to laundromat to stuff ginormous bedspread into supersized washer (which required 24 quarters - TWENTY. FOUR. QUARTERS! I mean, damn)
Ran home and repeated the room cleaning-under-pain-of-duress routine with Child #2
Ferried Child #2 to her playdate, with a stop along the way to transfer wet ginormous bedspread to supersized dryer
Ran back to birthday party location to collect Child #1
Picked up now-dry ginormous bedspread
Dragged reluctant Child #1 to grocery store for direly-needed foodstuffs, and then to pick up Child #2 at playdate
Dragged reluctant Child #1 and #2 away from playdate
Cleaned up kitchen (AGAIN)
Walked dog
Lugged firewood
Restarted fire
Made dinner
Served dinner
Fin
And I haven't even begun to deal with our regular laundry yet.
Whoo, I don't know how I manage to lead this glamorous life. I'm a regular Sheila E., I am. What really kills me is the sheer, unrelenting nature of it all - I spend all day Saturday and Sunday catching up from the week that just ended and getting ready for the week that's coming, just so I can make it to the next weekend and start the cycle all over again. Where's my day of rest, I ask you?? The Good Lord got one. Sheesh, even Tim Tebow gets his Sundays off (and he's getting a lot more of 'em, after that last meeting the Broncs had with the Pats, heh heh); so why don't I???
I'm telling you this not because I want to bore you to death (too late!) or because I'm whining, but to illustrate just how plebeian and uninspiring my daily rounds can be. It's no wonder I like going to work; work is a nine-hour stretch of time in which I'm guaranteed not to have to run errands. [An aside: This is also why I get all throat-punch-y when the latest megadiva to push out a crumbcrusher or two coos to the media about how much she loves motherhood and how it's such a privilege to spend every free moment possible with the child she simply adores and can't bear to be away from for even an hour. You just know this mom ain't the one spending hours schlepping her kid to eleventy-seven birthday parties a month; she's letting the nanny put Mahlyssah and Jaxon into their Beaux et Belles mufti so the driver can truck them off to Dylan's Candy Bar. Yeah, I'd think mothering was a trip to the spa, too, if I didn't have to, you know, do stuff for them.]
But I digress. Anywhat, I've decided that what I need is a soundtrack!! And, since I am a great fan of irony, I've decided that this soundtrack needs to have a theme, that being one celebrating the nonstop whirl of the champagne-and-caviar life I lead. In addition to the aforementioned Sheila E. tune, I was thinking of "Puttin' On The Ritz," either the real one or that disco version, and after that... well, I'm kinda stuck. Maybe Paradise City? Mo' Money Mo' Problems? What do you think? I'll let you know what I come up with, if I ever get enough time to pull such a playlist together.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I must be off. My public needs me. Those cat pans aren't going to scoop themselves, yanno. You can entertain yourself with this while you think:
P.S. My hair? Would totally do that, given the right (meaning bad) haircut and styling products. And for several years, it did.
If you are a fan of P.G. Wodehouse, you'll recognize this as the phrase Jeeves uses to describe how he manipulatesmanages Bertie Wooster in his capacity as a gentleman's gentleman. Keep that in mind as the story progresses.
One goal I strive to accomplish each year is getting my little charges to broaden their intellectual horizons by interacting with one another. However, as I've mentioned before, middle schoolers are wily little critters who are naturally distrustful of adult intentions and suspicious of any social interactions that smack of grown-up intervention. Usually, when I ask them to pair up for partner work, they automatically hew to their close circle of friends. Efforts to mix them up randomly by counting off, rolling dice, matching kids up by sock color and the like are usually greeted by responses ranging from "unenthusiastic" to "passive-aggressive," replete with heavy sighs, anguished looks, and monosyllabic answers. Good times, good times!
Today, I took a different approach. Step 1: I told the kids I was going to tell them something very, very politically incorrect. That got their attention. Step 2: I asked if anyone knew what a 'Chinese fire drill' was. This got a huge positive reaction from a portion of the class, usually the "goofy boy" population. Step 3: For those not in the know, I explained what that term meant, adding for emphasis that I was NOT suggesting that ANYONE should EVER EVER EVER get out at a dangerous intersection, run around their vehicle, and re-enter by another door, especially since I like my job and want to keep it (An aside: All I need is to have a TV anchor outside Upper Socioeconomic Middle School, intoning, "Several students were seriously injured today after attempting what is known as a 'Chinese fire drill,' which they learned about from their social studies teacher..." The thought gives me chills. Seriously.). Step 4: Introduce our class activity, now renamed the "social studies scramble," in which they would change seats and partners between questions. The kids had fifteen seconds in each round to find new seats and new partners, followed by thirty seconds to share answers.
Well.
You'd think I'd promised everyone a double-dip ice cream cone and a free pony by their reaction. The same kids who baaaarely have the energy to drag themselves to their seats when *I* partner them up were running around the room like their hair was on fire to get to a new partner. Even the most reluctant, unenthusiastic kids were racing around with the best of them. AND, as a nice little side bonus, I overheard the incessant talker who got put in the Cone of Silence and wasn't allowed to participate say to himself, "I really wish I was doing this." Then he perked up and asked me, "Can we call it the Cone of Shame?" (a la Dug in Up.) Being ever munificent in victory, I graciously acquiesced.
So let me recap what, exactly, we did in class today:
The kids answered questions.
They shared their answers with partners.
They changed partners between answers.
And I got them to think it was the greatest thing since the ball-point pen.
My coworkers are not exactly sympathetic to my obsession with procuring a large chunk of South African real estate for my ring finger. In fact, you could say some of them are downright dismissive of my hopes and dreams in the sparkler area.
"Are you still on that diamond kick?" asked Coworker #1
"Yep! I tried on a two-point-five carat ring over vacation!" I replied, glowing in the memory of that beautiful sparkler twinkling away on my...pinkie, because the ring was made for someone with fingers about as narrow as Posh Spice, apparently. "But it was $48,500, so I don't think I'll be getting that anytime soon."
"That's ridiculous. If you came in wearing a ring that big, I'd punch you," he answered. "I'd make a fist out of your hand and make you punch yourself in the eye with your ring."
"Oh, that again?" said Coworker #2. "Why were you looking at a fifty thousand dollar diamond ring, anyway?"
"I wasn't looking for a diamond like that," I said, perhaps a touch defensively, "I was at the jeweler's, and it was in the vintage case - "
"Wait, what were you doing at the jeweler's?" asked Coworker #2, "Were you just hanging out?"
"NO," I said, definitely defensively this time, "we were at the children's museum across the street, and Warren's been talking about getting an adventure bike to go along with his dirt bike, so I was going to look at diamond bands so that I could tell him, 'here, this is what it's going to cost you if you want to get an adventure bike,' so I just went in to look! I'm not getting a new diamond anytime soon!"
Hmphf. You'd think they'd be a little more supportive of a girl's dearest-held wish, but no. Well, I tell ya, if I ever win PowerBall, right after I write a huge check to the food pantry and the homeless shelter and my five favorite charities, the very next thing I'm doing is hiking my butt right back to that jewelry store, and I'm not walking out til that ring is sitting in its rightful place on my left hand. So there!
All I have to do now is start playing PowerBall.
... and if all that sounds horribly acquisitive and grasping and totally un-Buddhist of me, well... it would be worth a few extra lifetimes to have a ring that nice. Plus, I'm not the only one who thinks so:
So! I was all excited to see the end of 2011. It was mostly okay, to begin, but degenerated into a bit of a suckfest (I said suckfest, iPad, not sickest), what with various and sundry family health crises, professional stresses, and general feelings of personal ineffectiveness taking up the latter part of my year.
And then I got a stomach bug to start the new year.
I'm warning you, 2012 - I am in no. Mood. For this. Let's just call this 2011's parting shot and start fresh tomorrow, mmmkay?
If you're waiting on that package from me - you know, the one with the tasteful, handmade Christmas gifts? And the custom-made photo card, replete with holiday letter and a personally-written message just for you in it? Well, don't hold your breath. You'll be lucky to get a mass-produced card with our names scrawled at the bottom, probably with a stain of mysterious origin in one corner and a stamp from last year on it. Cuz that is the way it's rolling right now. The sink is full of dishes, the basket's full of laundry, the bookbag's full of work, and I am full of self-pity. FFS, I spend all freaking week doing dishes, laundry, and work, just so I can collapse on the couch for a few minutes on the weekend and recuperate enough to do the whole routine all over again the next week. And it seems like no sooner do I get things beaten into shape (or at least, vaguely beaten into shape as long as you don't look too closely), then the kids drag out all 2,763 Polly Pockets, Warren decides to make one of his signature recipes that dirties every dish and plate in the house, the cat throws up on the nice rug and someone announces that he or she is out of underwear; is there any clean?
Siiiigghhhh.
Maybe Santa will bring me my very own Alice Nelson for Christmas. Or my friend Audra the pharma rep will send some opiate derivatives my way; one or the other.
I was in the middle of writing a nice, long, chatty post (really! I was!), when suddenly, I got a "bad gateway" error.
I waited and waited and waited and finally hit the back button on the browser to find... everything I'd typed past the first sentence? Was gone. Gone. As in, gone with the wind. Gone fishing. Gone to hell. Gone, baby, gone. AND I HAD SAVED THAT SUCKER. SEVERAL TIMES, MIND YOU, and not just after something kinda weird happened that made me think, gee, maybe I should've been saving this all along but I'm going to now and OH CRAP WTF JUST HAPPENED HERE. No, I saved it SEVERAL TIMES like the big, grown up, mature computer user that I am and STILL my post went bye bye and I have NO idea where it might be, other than not here.
*Sigh*
When I work up the morale to recreate all that effort, I'll get around to posting that story. Soon. Well, soon'ish. Meanwhile, ponder these words of wisdom and I'll get back to you.
We completed standardized testing this week, which always becomes an endurance contest for the kids who have to sit silently for hours at a stretch. After testing the other day, we took them outside so they could run around like morons get some fresh air and exercise.
We noticed after awhile that a group of kids was loitering around the maintenance shed. The shed had been left open, which was unusual, leaving the contents - a garbage can, some empty lockers - exposed. Anyone who works with middle schoolers would recognize immediately the opportunity for chaos and anarchy that presents to the average 13-year-old mind, so the cluster of giggling adolescents quickly registered on the radar. The team teacher outside with me shuffled over to investigate what they found so enthralling. A fellow schoolmate stuffed in a garbage can? A locker full of teen spirit? What?
A couple minutes later, she shuffled back, but the students remained where they were.
"What's going on?" I asked.
"They're playing Storage Wars," she answered. "I didn't want to stop them."
Yep. You read that correctly. Our little charges were pretending the maintenance shed was a newly-opened storage unit and placing bids on the loot they speculated it might contain. For fun.
