Filed under: Middle Age, Misc. Humor, Parenting | Tags: adulthood, adulting, Facebook, friends, friendship, guilt, Middle-Age, relationships, social media
I’m tired of FaceBook making me feel like a crappy parent, an uninvolved citizen, an un-inspiring adult, and someone who is only marginally good at weird visual puzzles. Mostly, I’m tired of feeling guilty about things I didn’t realize I’m supposed to be doing to be a good person, according to the Facebook Junkies.
Brace yourselves – I realize I’m probably going to offend some of you – but I’ve never been accused of holding back or using much of a filter, so here comes the hurricane…
First, stop with the chain posts – Share this with 10 people who need a hug today. If you send me one of those, consider it dead when it reaches my page. Adding a task to my already overloaded shit-I-have-to-do-today list does not make me feel more loved. I need an administrative assistant, not a FaceBook hug.
I also need a break from all those pseudo-inspirational messages like, Who did you inspire today? Or, my personal non-favorite, How are you bringing your AMAZING to work today? Seriously? How about “Congratulations! You didn’t punch that person in the throat today!” Or maybe, “Hang in there – they can’t all be that stupid.” Or, if you don’t like the heavy sarcasm, how about “Try to be nice to people today – yep, even them.”
But the ones that REALLY get me are the posts that say something like Share this if you have an amazing son/daughter. Wow – those are annoying on so many levels.
First, I’m pretty sure my kids know I think they’re amazing. If you don’t, D1 and D2, please be confident that I’m well aware that you both are already better people than I am, that you inspire me every day, and that I brag about you to the people that matter. When I criticize you, it doesn’t mean I think you’re stupid – it means I’m trying to protect you, and enable you to function as a kind adult in an unkind world.
Second, if I were a person struggling to conceive, or who’s child had passed away, I can only imagine that it would break my heart a little every time one of those little brag posts popped up.
And finally, I noticed there are precious few posts in the same vein saying, Share if you have an amazing husband/wife/partner/grandparent/parent. Hmmmmm….what does that say about us?
The Share this if you love your son/daughter/grandchild posts are almost as bad. So are you saying that if I don’t share it I don’t love my kid? Seriously? I would be more irritated with this one if I thought a lot of kids were actually on FaceBook and fretting that their parents didn’t love them since they didn’t share that post. But, since most of them are on every platform other than FaceBook, maybe these aren’t so bad – just mildly guilt-inducing for us dinosaurs who don’t speak in pictures and acronyms.
So, like many of my friends have from time to time, I’m going to take a break from FaceBook. My blog posts will still appear because they automatically push to it, so don’t worry – you’ll still get your doses of Subourbonmom wit. Of course, it will help my chances of getting them published in a an actual book if you follow the blog by signing up to receive it via email. (Okay, that’s my very rare marketing plug.)
And don’t worry, Family, I’ll still be stalking you on Instagram and SnapChat, and yes, I know y’all have Finstas and other places where I’m the subject of many a meme. Have at it – the fact that you’re posting anything about me means I’m making an impact on your life.
Share this if you love sharing FaceBook rants.
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: Exercise | Tags: bicycle, bikes, Exercise, gerbil, gym, spin, sports, treadmill
One of the many reasons I’m not a runner is because it hurts every joint from your hips to your toes. When I hopped off the still moving treadmill and tried to stretch my hip by twisting my leg into a pretzel, the gym trainer made me get on the exercise bike instead.
I hate the bike. I hate it with a passion I usually reserve for pedophiles, animal abusers and people who don’t use their turn signals.
Partly, I hate it because I associate it with those ultra-considerate people who ride bikes on the country roads by my house, taking up an entire lane while going 10 mph, and holding up traffic for miles. I dislike those biking enthusiasts even more when they have the audacity to grump when I shoot past them because…that’s right, I LIVE ON THAT ROAD. Bikers, I’m glad you’re out for your afternoon of freedom and exercise, but I live 20 minutes from town – I’ve got shit to do and errands to run before I too can enjoy the great outdoors, and you’re making it take even longer.
But I digress.
Mostly I hate the exercise bike at the gym because I sweat like a politician telling the truth as I do the hill climb or whatever cardio Hell they’ve decided to throw at us. I start wheezing because it’s hard work pedaling up an imaginary hill to nowhere. I suck wind like I’ve been dutch-ovened after a chili cook-off because, in order to make the RPMs like I’m supposed to, I have to lean over and use the arm rests on the front of the bike. No big deal you say? You try flailing your legs in a tiny circle in record time while you’re bent in half. It’s like running on a gerbil wheel while trying to lick your stomach.
Did I mention that I hate the bike?
When I’m done, completely spent and in danger of becoming a “sprinkler,” (one whose sweat dances off their body and onto others) I go to the office, shower and examine the damage. I will never be able to go to the OBGYN while I’m having to ride this Inquisition torture device – there would be some questions asked about the bruises all over my inner thighs. Helloooo…ever heard of seat cushions, oh Makers of the Almighty Exercise Bike?
So, I went out and bought some actual exercise leggings for an added protective layer. It didn’t help. I still look like I’ve been riding a bony bucking bronco every morning.
And I will never understand those people who do spin classes and say how much they love it, how addicted they are.
I think it’s a cult.
They probably keep hundreds of gerbils spinning on wheels in their homes just to watch them go, because they’re so obsessed; and, I’ll bet some of them spin to power their eco- and gerbil-friendly homes as they try to challenge Lance Armstrong’s over-sized, steroid-tripping heart. Over-achievers, if you ask me. I would much rather walk and jog on a fake road, thank you very much.
I will always hate the exercise bike, but the bottom line (aside from the ones on my actual bottom) is that it does rest my hip joints, and I’m no longer in danger of flying off the back of the treadmill while I stretch during the hardest parts of the workout (I’m not stupid – I’m not going to waste the walking portion with stretching).
So don’t worry Lance, you and your gerbils are in no danger from me.
Subourbon Mom 