Filed under: Middle Age, Misc. Humor | Tags: adulthood, adulting, attitude, bullying, clothing, dating, fashion, friends, friendship, Middle-Age, relationships, women, women's health
I’d rather be hit on by a woman than by a man.
Let’s face it – a lot of women, when it comes to the fashion choices of their peers, are judgy sometimes downright bitchy.
Yep, I went there.
Maybe men are too – I just don’t know enough about that species, even after living with one for decades, to make that call. (I have my suspicions, but I figure this post will irritate enough people in one go.)
You can go ahead and get uncomfortable and deny that you and your friends are like that, and that it’s a sexist thing to say. But I’ll bet you’re denying it while wearing some kind of socially acceptable clothing that isn’t made strictly for comfort. If you’re naked or wearing a onsie, I apologize for lumping you into this ridiculous generalization and salute you.
Now, if you’re out hunting in your local bar and your Cha Cha is hanging out there for all to see, then by all means, get those kudos from the guys – you probably don’t give a crap what other women are thinking anyway. Fist bump for setting a goal and going after it.
But let’s be honest – most of you have been out with your friends at one time or another and some girl walked by looking slutty, overdressed, underdressed, dressed too young/too old or just too different. Take your pick. And, someone in your group shook her head, pursed her lips, and said something mean about that girl behind her hand. If you’re in the South, she might even say something backhanded, like, “It must be nice to have enough confidence to go without a bra after nursing four kids.” So yeah, mean and bitchy. (I have no doubt there are men who do this too, and women who don’t – but if I talked about them, this wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.)
Don’t get me wrong, I like having men hit on me, too. It’s good to know that if all the rules in the world, my ethics and my love for Hubby were different, I could get a piece of that – it’s a powerful feeling. And having Hubby hit on me after 25 years of marriage is super-gratifying – I mean the man has seen me throwing up and giving birth to two kids. There’s not a lot of glamour left. Having a woman hit on me simply carries a different kind of weight – the same way someone telling you your dog is cute at the dog park might not be as satisfying as having an American Kennel Club judge tell you your dog could win the next championship. There’s a level of knowledge that makes the compliment mean more.
Sooo… another woman is going to get what went in to making all this awesomeness happen:
- the hair products to make your locks smooth/curly/shiny/smelling good and every color of the hair rainbow
- the blow-drying/straightening/curling so it looks like you didn’t blow dry/straighten/curl it
- the makeup that’s just the right amount so it hides your flaws but doesn’t make you look like a ’ho
- the clothes that say you’re not on the pole, but that still show off all the good parts (which by the way, aren’t necessarily the same for men and women)
- the lengths you go through to not show panty lines – which leads to:
- no underwear at all, a la Britney Spears back in the day (Millennials, think Kim Kardashian);
- an uncomfortable thong that shows off all the cellulite; or
- Spanx, which pushes all the fat into one place and looks like your grandma’s undies
My guess is most men don’t really want to know how we Goddesses of Love and Lycra got this way. I love bologna, but I don’t want to know what it’s made of or how it got into those perfect, round slices of deliciousness. That’s what dating is for – to get beyond the packaging and, if you’re in your 40’s and lucky, the ingredients will be better than what’s in bologna.
Sadly, women don’t often openly and positively comment on other women, especially ones they don’t know. Shame on us. And, more often than not, it seems to me that women dress for other women, not for men – and it’s because we’re scared.
So the next time you’re out, no matter who you’re with or whether you know the person or not, send a genuine compliment out there – we are most critical of ourselves, and you never know what kind of day or week someone has had. Putting on a clean shirt or a bra may have been the best they could do that day. Saying “Hey, I like your shirt” or “Your hair looks good today,” or even better, “I think you’re funny/kind/smart,” may make someone’s day in a way you never expected.
Filed under: Middle Age, Misc. Humor | Tags: boredom, bullying, cow tipping, crime, fun, games, jokes, Middle-Age, practical jokes, social media, stealing, theft
With all the warnings about bullying on social media in the news, I started wondering when playing jokes on people moved from the relatively fun and harmless (i.e. stink bombs, shuffling someone’s CDs into all the wrong cases) to the soul-destroying campaigns causing young people to want to kill themselves.
What happened to the creativity? It’s easy to smear someone’s reputation anonymously online. It’s much harder to find a way to grow grass on someone’s carpet while they’re home on break, or to remove the slats from their bed so that it crashes when they sit on it, and not get caught. Or better yet, get caught, have a laugh, repair the damage and wait for the required retribution. At the very least, you’ll find out which of your friends don’t have the same sense of humor as you do – best to lave them alone.
When I was a teenager growing up in a small rural town, there wasn’t a lot to do aside from partying in the woods like every clichéd country anthem. When the cops showed up, they just told everyone to go home – even getting busted was pretty boring. So we had to find other things to do to liven it up, like cow tipping, which is not impossible, but in my experience always unsuccessful because there’s nothing louder than a bunch of teenagers trying to be quiet. Plus, cows don’t really sleep standing up.
We also “borrowed” grocery store shopping carts and left them in our friends’ front yards. Nothing says “I have friends my parents love” like waking up and trying to explain why there are three grocery store carts parked on your front porch and one has beer cans in it. Oh, and could I please use the family car to do the right thing and return it?
In my twenties, that same boredom and lack of funds caused some of my friends to turn to stealing milk crates from the backs of convenience stores (free shelving) and swiping anything to do with Pabst Blue Ribbon from bars (free glassware and wall decorations). That shot/bar glass collection that every twenty-something seems to have? It’s usually partnered with a stack of coasters or posters.
Now, as a mature adult, when I don’t have money for things, I sulk or charge my credit card ‘cause that’s not real money anyway. The labeled glasses I have the days are purchased from wine tastings, not bars, and if a shopping cart ends up in my yard, it wasn’t my generation that deposited it there.
But not everyone has purged that reflex. For example, “J” still maintains and updates her massive collection of signs. She has a secret room (yes, it’s red) that is wallpapered with signs from restaurants, hospitals, streets, restrooms and bars. She even carries around sign-removing tools in her purse so she won’t miss an opportunity. Another friend has three full-size stoplights under his house (don’t ask).
I have only been seriously tempted to take one item in my recent adult life, and that is the photograph of a black lab sitting on a beach that hangs above the toilet in the bathroom at my local restaurant. It was a running joke for a while that one day I was going to have one too many drinks and walk out with it. Years later, I’m glad I didn’t. Recently, I was in the same bathroom and noticed that above the picture I liked is a new picture – the same dog sitting on the same beach, but clearly many years older. There is white around his muzzle, and he has the bony-hipped look old dogs get. This is, or maybe was, someone’s pet. If I had taken that picture, I might have been taking someone’s memory of their beloved dog.
Sometimes being a grownup brings the maturity that destroying someone anonymously (or not) isn’t a great use of your time, creative skills or humanity. And sometimes being a grownup brings a lot of sentimentality with it – which also happens to protect a lot of things.
So I didn’t steal the picture. I stay off social media as far as destroying people, and I let karma do its job.
Also, I don’t carry a purse big enough to carry out two 11×14 picture frames.
Filed under: Middle Age, Parenting, shopping | Tags: adulthood, American Girl, Breyer, catalogs, Christmas, email, holiday, Holidays, humor, marketing, sales, shopping, subourbonmom
The holiday season is upon us. Christmas music plays incessantly on local radio stations, pumpkin spice everything has been replaced with cinnamon everything and the marketing onslaught is in full swing.
Now I’m all for marketing – a store’s got to do something to get your attention amid the mind-boggling Elf on a Shelf displays. But come on, Marketers, every day can’t be “The BIGGEST SALE EVER.” I don’t care how much your store has to sell by the end of the year – no marketing email should ever be labeled URGENT unless Victoria has decided to reveal her secret, or I’m getting something good for free that doesn’t include shipping or some God-awful tote bag I’ll never take in public.
Along with emails, the catalogs are also rolling in faster than sexual harassment accusations in the media.
In two days I got 19 catalogs in the mail. That’s right…19 catalogs. But the number of catalogs isn’t what I’m here to write about. In fact, I love looking through them every morning while I drink my coffee. (Catalogs are window shopping for people who have an aversion to other people.) It’s funny how at this time of year I will actually consider buying weird, only-funny-to-me gifts that I would never spend the money on at any other time. In previous years I’ve ordered squirrel spray, Sasquatch Band-Aids and key chains with made up nicknames on them.
But in this latest batch of shopper’s crack, I found two catalogs whose marketing teams failed (in my humble opinion).
When I saw this cover on a catalog for toy horse models, I couldn’t decide who the target audience was – was it kids who want to be like this model with the BRF, who clearly would rather be anywhere else? Or parents who want to believe their twelve-year-old still plays with model horses instead of obsessively checking the likes on her Finsta? (I have nothing personal against this model – she’s obviously very attractive and was told how to pose and smile.) Perhaps a better image for the cover would have been a younger kid happily playing on the floor on a rainy day with all the crap in the catalog. To the parents it says, “You are buying yourself some peace and quiet.” To the kid, it says, “This will bring you happiness until you can wear them down and they give you your own pony to keep in the garage.”
The other cover fail was on this American Girl catalog:
Nothing says I’m a stalker like hugging your best friend while also clutching a doll that looks and dresses exactly like her.
But in all of this marketing blitz, I realized there is a catalog I have never received, that I think a lot of people might want to order from as well. It’s filled with all my favorite things that I can’t by in a store, like these:
- Life do-overs
- The smell of my mother’s garage
- Knowing how to speak and understand animals in their language
- The ability to fly
- One consequence-free bitch slap on the person of my choice
- Opportunities to suck words back into my head that should never have escaped
- Time to spend with those who aren’t here anymore
- Dog kisses
- An interview with King Arthur
- The feeling you get when you snuggle with your kids
What would your catalog have in it?
Filed under: Food/Drink, Middle Age, Misc. Humor, Travel | Tags: adulting, bars, beach, crime, drinking, fun, girls, hot tub, lifeguard, north carolina, Outer banks, relationships, rental, vacation, Virginia
Dear Rental House Owner –
Thank you so much for your nice letter and for helpfully providing your lawyer’s name and address, although I don’t think it will be necessary. We had a great girls’ weekend staying in your beach house, and everyone was so friendly! It’s nice when a bunch of middle-aged women can get together for some relaxing quiet time at the beach. I hope you saw that we replaced the wine glasses and re-stocked the liquor cabinet. The combination for the replacement padlock is written on a sticky note by the phone.
And thank you for asking if we got home okay after our night out. We had no idea that your friend Jim owns the _________________ Bar – he was very sweet to escort us personally to our car after Sarah twisted her ankle on the stage. It was also very kind of him to kick that married guy out after he said, “I like your rack” to Lisa. Those drinks the married guy sent over for us that tasted like liquid Skittles were nasty – give us good wine or bourbon any day – what was he thinking? Please tell Jim we hope we didn’t drive too many of his younger customers away with our dancing. Those millennial girls just don’t have the moves we do, and I think they were embarrassed at how much better we were. (They sure do know how to roll their eyes though.) But one nice girl came up to Cheryl and said it must be nice to trust your friends enough to let them hold while you hang upside down like that.
Your next-door neighbor was also very nice, letting us come up on one of his balconies to watch the sunset. When Terry fell and broke her wine glass because she miscounted the steps, he asked if she was okay and didn’t even comment on her speech impediment (it’s often confused with slurring). We cleaned up the wine and broken glass for him, but he had already gone inside so we couldn’t say thank you in person.
You must have a lot of crime in that area – that explains all the cameras. We would greatly appreciate it if you would please tell your other neighbors we were only trying to be helpful when we checked that their hot tub was clean and the heater was working (it was). You might also want to pass on that the cleaners didn’t do a very good job. There was lots of sand in the bottom of the hot tub and two bottles of Fireball had been left on the porch rail. We didn’t want the cleaners to get into trouble so we finished the Fireball off – hence the empties. There wasn’t much we could do about the sand. But if your neighbors find a diamond stud earring, they can put that towards the next cleaning fee.
We noticed that things were a bit dry in North Carolina, so we decided to save water for you by bathing over there. Lisa’s suit color tends to run, so she thought it might do better in the pool. Oh, and by the way, the neighbors also might want to have their pool deck leveled out. Apparently, what they saw on the camera was Lisa falling on the uneven pavement as she was putting her clean bathing suit back on. She must have bumped her head, because she put it on upside down and inside out. We still haven’t figured out how that’s even possible, but that’s Lisa for you. But don’t worry, she says she doesn’t have any interest in litigating the injury.
Yes, we did have one extra person stay overnight. The nice lifeguard we met at Jim’s bar offered to drive us home, and it’s a good thing he did because there aren’t a lot of Ubers around on the off season (none seemed available that late at night – we kept getting declined). I wonder if you know him? There can’t be that many lifeguards who also have a degree in tribal mating dances – that’s probably what you saw on your cameras. But it was extremely fortunate he was there because Cheryl must have had some kind of reaction to the food at the bar – she required mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The lifeguard was very concerned for her privacy so he took her into the other room and managed to revive her after several minutes. After that, it was late and he was tired, so the least we could do was let him spend the night. He was a real gentleman – he even fixed us all breakfast the next morning.
If you find the following items we would appreciate it if you would return them:
2 black bathing suit tops
1 pink thong
1 blue bathing suit bottom
1 floral eye mask
3 pairs of readers – black, navy blue and hunter green, varying strengths
Thanks again for your letter of concern, and as you can see, no lawyers will be necessary. We are happy to pay for any damages we didn’t already repair, but I don’t think the tire tracks in your front yard were from us. Sadly, there were a lot of drunk people out that night – some people just can’t handle themselves on vacation. Even the nice police officer who stopped us on the way home said the lifeguard was just driving a little fast. After looking into the car when Cheryl starting yelling “Don’t slur your driving!” and seeing that Lisa was a bit green around the gills, he decided to let us go. What an understanding young man! He even fist bumped the lifeguard. Your beach town is such a friendly place! You must feel so proud to have a house there!
Until next year,
The Girls.
Filed under: Middle Age, Misc. Humor | Tags: adulthood, Douchebag, etiquette, friends, friendship, Middle-Age, New Girl, office humor, relationships, Roadhouse
I’ve figured out how I’m going to retire early. Stealing from the under-rated show New Girl, I’m going to start carrying around a Douchebag Jar.
In case you’re still scratching your head and wondering “What the hell is she talking about now?” here’s the deal: You carry a mason jar or whatever you have handy (depending on where you are it may need to be a full-on trash can), and whenever someone commits an act of douchebaggery, they must contribute a fine to the jar.
What is a douchebag? Urban Dictionary defines it as “An individual who has an over-inflated sense of self-worth, compounded by a low level of intelligence, behaving ridiculously in front of people with no sense of how moronic he appears.”
When can you point out that someone is acting like a douchebag? Well, that’s where it gets a little tricky. Generally, calling someone out for douchebaggery at work is not a good idea; after all, we are supposed to respect our colleagues and play nice in the sandbox, etc. Plus, it could get you fired:
Accuser: “You owe a dollar to the DB Jar.”
Co-Worker: “Why?”
Accuser: “Because you interrupted my client call to tell me you’re going to Bonaroo and MIGHT or MIGHT NOT be back on Monday.”
Co-Worker: “You’re just jealous. Going to Bonaroo doesn’t make me DB.”
Accuser: “No, but thinking your undefined availability while you’re at a concert matters more than my client call, does.”
Co-Worker: “You’re fired.”
Accuser: “You still owe The Jar, plus $20 more because you’re 50 and going to Bonaroo.”
Calling someone out that you don’t know, especially in public, can lead to violence (reference every bar fight ever).
So that leaves friends.
That’s right, sometimes you have to call out your friends. Most folks have at least one friend who periodically acts in a douche-baggy fashion and needs to be corrected. After all, isn’t that what friends are for? We are friends with people for lots of reasons, but one of the best is that they help to make us better people. Don’t believe me? When was the last time your friends gave you an eye roll or responded in a voice dripping with sarcasm to something you said? That’s your friends correcting your behavior, and in theory making you a better person. The Douchebag Jar is just another tool for correcting behavior.
Subourbon Mom 