Filed under: Middle Age, shopping, Spring Break, Travel | Tags: adulthood, humor, Middle-Age, shopping, travel
Apparently bathing suit shopping season is here. I know that because all over my social media feeds are ads for bathing suits featuring svelte and often malnourished models posing in ways you will never see on the beach.
I want to see real moms and middle-aged folks wearing real suits with REAL evaluations. How about a picture of a mom dragging her toddler down the beach because he’s refusing to leave?
Here’s a few I’d like to see….
Our beach track suit provides the support you need up top and the grip you need on the bottom while you run.
Review: 3 stars
Unless you’re wearing an actual track suit, nothing will cover and lift all the things. But I like the irony of wearing a Frozen t-shirt at the beach.
Forgot your razor at the beach? Or maybe you gave a half-hearted try at landscaping after doing nothing winter and your body rebelled by displaying red bumps of displeasure. Either way, we have two solutions:
Option 1:
This gorgeous suit comes with a pelvis flap that you can tuck in or leave out depending on how neglectful you’ve been.
Review: 5 Stars
Sexy and for all body types.
Option 2:
The Tighty Rightey bathing suit bottom made for women. Comes in a variety of colors and patterns.
Review: 1 Star
Appreciate the idea, but having your leg cut off at the upper thigh with a white stripe doesn’t look good on anyone. Also it looks like you went to the first-aid tent.
Is your skin the exact same color as the sand because you work in an office all year? Or has your dermatologist canceled all your appointments because you refuse to listen and now you know there’s like 10 moles that are pretty scary looking and you should probably cover up after all these years? Our whole-body suit comes in dozens of shades and includes footies, so no one will ever know. Just a add a little blending makeup to your face and you’ll look like you’ve been on the beach all summer.
Review: 3 Stars
5 stars for sun protection and keeping the dermatologist happy. 1 star because if you swim, the sand gets stuck inside the suit, and the suit doesn’t breathe well. If you’re a woman you’ll have a yeasty after one wear.
Afraid to bend over and shake out your towel or pass out at water’s edge because you might get a wedgie? Our “cocktail” suit is made to look like you’re just stepped away from a party. The material moves with you as you struggle to clean up your beach stuff after 2 bottles of prosecco or if you actually pass out. No more jokes about your hiney eating your suit – just a sophisticated outfit that says, “Yeah, I‘ve had kids and I like wine – fuck off.”
Review: 5 Stars
Filed under: Misc. Humor, Parenting, Travel | Tags: adulthood, graduation, Nashville, pandemic, parenting, travel, virus
Over the last two weeks we have launched one of our birds out of the nest and into real adulthood, and gently booted the other one back into fake adulthood (a.k.a. college).
During this process I learned a few things:
- My kids have a lot of shit – that we helped them move around the country, put up on walls and launder.
- They have better decorating taste than I will ever have
- If you rent a scooter (think razor scooter) to tour a city, just know that if you sucked at Mario cart, you will also suck at riding one of those
- You can switch the way a refrigerator door swings – seriously, I didn’t know you could do that at all
- Nashville will either make you start to hate fried chicken or ruin it because whenever you have it anywhere else it just won’t be good enough
One of the funniest things I heard was on the 10-hour car ride to launch Daughter #1 into her new, adult life in Nashville. We had lots of time to talk about what it might be like and what had happened over the last 6 months. But I think she put it best when describing how a lot of recent graduates must feel around this time as they get jobs or head to college:
Mom, my life has been like an ingrown hair. For a while I was growing and then I got stuck, but I was still growing, and it got all irritated. All of the sudden I sprang out and I’ve moved, and I’m free!
From the mouths of babes, people – 2020 has been an ingrown hair of a year. First it was growing and happening, and then it got stuck, but things were still happening. The world got irritated, but we’re trying to treat it with a salve of Dr. Faucci, the CDC and governors trying their best; with first responders and hospital staff and caregivers; and most of all, with sympathy, empathy and patience.
We’re still waiting to spring out of this craziness, but when we do, the relief will probably feel the same.
(I tried to find a funny ingrown hair meme – please don’t ever do that. You can’t un-see what comes up.)
Filed under: Travel | Tags: brain, cars, driving, health, mental illness, traffic, travel
As pandemic restrictions are loosened and people start to emerge like moles into daylight, I am reminded again how normally intelligent, capable people – people who are doctors and lawyers and engineers outside of their cars – often drive like they’re living the Mario Kart dream or on the antique car ride at King’s Dominion. And God forbid it should start raining – holy shit – it’s like some kind of collective amnesia or processing disorder takes over.
I call this hydro-automentia or, forgetting-how-to-drive-when-it-rains syndrome.
Let me give you an example. It’s raining, but not too hard – summer rain that finally cools the road off enough so that your dog stops pulling to get onto the grass and stop frying his paws like four little eggs. If you’re driving in this type of rain, a traveler with hydroautomentia in front of you slows WAY down, switches on his hazards and proceeds as if the rain is made of acid and any splash-up will disintegrate his car. These are often the same people who ride their brakes no matter what the weather.
Then there are the people who suffer from auto-identitatem syndrome, or car identity syndrome. The symptoms can vary and may be exacerbated by disproportionate amounts of testosterone, narcissism and Karen-itis. Here are a few symptoms:
- Jersey slashing (If you’re from the south, it’s identity confusion over your place of origin; if you’re from the north, you think you’re just being efficient.)
- Owning a car that resembles a current or past police vehicle model so that is scares the Bejeezus out of everyone you creep up behind
- Having a personalized license plate that is either indecipherable or only means something to you, the car owner – either way, you’ve made me look at your car for way too long without getting it and now I’m annoyed
- Having any kind of “_______ on Board” sign suction cupped to your window – I don’t care and it’s usually not true anyway. Plus, if you have a baby on board you’re providing free advertising to pedophiles.
- Having any version of the family member stickers on your back window – unless it’s the one where the dinosaur/shark has eaten one of the family members (that’s just funny). Again, you’re advertising to pedophiles, but now they also know exactly which sex and approximate age is in the car and which sports fields to go to.
The last syndrome folks need to be aware of is mergus-icognita. This syndrome manifests in two primary ways: not using the blinkers/turn signals at a stoplight, and not indicating if you are merging onto an off-ramp. I’ve written about this one before, so I’ll just say that I don’t need a mystery when I’m driving. Life provides me with enough unexplained stuff, like if money is the root of all evil, why do they ask for it in church? The point is, I don’t need to play “Guess Which Way I’m Going” when I’m at a busy intersection or trying to get on a highway.
So, in addition to the symptoms of COVID-19, the flu, allergies, anxiety and depression that we are supposed to be mindful of right now, please monitor yourself for the symptoms described above. If you do have them, try home remedies first, like removing the offending signage or practicing using your turn signals in your driveway before venturing out and infecting the rest of us.
Oh, and don’t forget the #1 Rule:
Be Kind.
Filed under: Exercise, Middle Age, Misc. Humor, Travel | Tags: Exercise, fitness, games, islands, jeff probst, lying, pop culture, reality television, relaity tv, relationships, sports, survivor, television, travel
I don’t know what it is about Americans in particular, but we seem to like watching TV shows that make sporting events out of activities other people do in their daily life. Off the top of my head, Survivor and American Ninja Warrior come to mind. American Ninja Warrior takes the obstacle courses military organizations used to use for training and makes it into a giant, high-tech jungle gym for middle-class gym rats. Americans play Survivor on islands where people actually scratch out a living every day – not just for 40 days and then are flown back to their AC and Netflix.
And I love both of those shows.
We still watch Survivor. I hate the people, and it makes me mad, but it’s a train wreck each season, and there’s been 38 seasons. It seems I’m compelled to watch adults relive 8th grade by lying, backstabbing, deciding as a group who’s undesirable, and seeking revenge later on as an outsider.
I like Survivor because it has contestants that can do all the things I can’t in prolonged, difficult social situations. Here are 9 reasons why I would never win survivor:
- Starting Fires: If I don’t have Fatwood from Plow and Hearth or a stack of old newspapers, I’m pretty useless. (Voted Off – Day 2)
- Food-shut downs, or “The Hangry’s:” Based on people’s reactions to my food shut-downs, I’m pretty sure I would be voted off in the first three days. Apparently, I become unreasonable and just a bit bitchy. They would probably require my one item I could bring to be a Snickers. There is no way I would voluntarily eat sugar-free food (i.e. rice) for 40 days straight without being one of those contestants that gets all listless and weepy (Voted Off – Day 3).
- Hot flashes in the Jungle: I always feel superior as I watch these skeletal twenty-somethings running around wearing teeny-weeny bikinis in the heat and humidity of whatever island they’re dropped on. I dare them to try that with a muffin top while having hot flashes. (Voted Off – Day 4)
- Compete without injury: I’ve got bad shoulders, bad hips and I throw like a chimp. Not exactly your desired anchor man in most competitions. That said, you need some swimming done? I’m your girl. (Voted Off – Day 6)
- Solve puzzles: Can’t. Never could. See this?
I’ve never been able to do it. Or this? 
I took those apart or smashed them, depending on my mood. I could proibably hide that deficit for a few days, but not the whole time. (Voted Off – Week 2) - Sunburn: I have an appointment this month to get more pieces of my face taken off (again). I’m pretty sure living on an island for month without sunscreen would hammer that last nail in my peaches-and-cream coffin. (Voted Off – Week 2)
- Think logically when tired: Let me put it this way – people at work know not to
give me anything after 3:00pm because my brain is tired. I’m pretty sure logical, chess-like thinking is not going to be my strong-suit after being sleep and sugar deprived. Also, I still can’t figure out how to put on one of those bra things that makes your straps into a racerback. (Voted Off – Week 3) - Maintaining the Lies: One time in the airport I was looking disapprovingly at a girl with a tramp stamp and a thong hanging way above her pants as she tied her shoe; two men were staring at me and laughing at my expression, not even paying attention to the thong. Apparently, my face does not hide my feelings as well as I thought. (Voted Off – Pick Any Day I Look At People)
- Razors: Seriously, people and after 40 days, people would run away from the Sasquatch that I have become. And the guys who wax their chests on the show? One of my favorite things ever is to watch it slowly grow back in on each episode. (Voted Off – Day 39)
So sorry, Jeff Probst. I’m only fodder for the first episode, where they winnow out the sick and old, like lions culling the weak water buffalo from the herd. But American Ninja Warrior – that’s another story. I’m going to get Hubby to build a Warp Wall so we can start practicing.
Filed under: Middle Age, Misc. Humor, Posts, Travel | Tags: dermatologist, health, silence of the lambs, skin, sunburn
Today I went to the dermatologist for my annual visit, which always makes me temporarily look like I fell headfirst into a vat of liquid herpes virus. Blisters are on my forehead, nose and cheeks from where she froze a bunch of questionable freckles and moles. I also requested to have a skin tag removed so I don’t have a weird, skinny pinky growing out of my neck – but when she froze it off, it blistered, and now it looks like a I have an abnormally small third nipple growing there instead.
One of the things that is supposed to separate us from the animals is our ability to postpone gratification. We can wait to eat that chocolate bar in the bin at the grocery store checkout when we know there’s a huge anniversary steak waiting for us at Ruth’s Chris. The flip side of that is our ability to understand that not all consequences are immediate. The fact that you hung your little brother in the closet all afternoon by the back of his shirt may not have incurred parental wrath until Dad got home. Then the beatings would begin.
Sun damage is the same. When I forgot to flip over as I basted my teenage self, there wasn’t any immediate regret, just the tingle of a mild sunburn or the occasional blister. Aaaah, but the punishment has begun. These days, I can see lines that are soon going to make me look like a dried-up prune, or one of those muppets in the movie Labyrinth.
The movie Something About Mary also comes to mind – and not the Cameron Diaz character. 
I’m pretty sure that Botox won’t help either – making my face immobile might take away the lines, but it will also make it impossible for anyone to know if I’m being sarcastic or just super bitchy.
My skin may look 20 years older than I am, but there’s always a silver lining: I don’t have to worry about Hannibal Lecter or Buffalo Bill anymore (Silence of the Lambs). I think my skin has finally started turning into leather while I’m still wearing it. It’s not quite saddle or boot material, and no amount of lotion is going to make it into a good skin suit (don’t ever Google that – trust me).
So that’s my Public Service Announcement – wear your sunblock and your 100 SPF t-shirts, and please, please, please go see your dermatologist regularly. Not being afraid of Hannibal Lecter and Buffalo Bill is a silver lining, but don’t put yourself in a position where you have to look for one.
Subourbon Mom 