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, 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.
Filed under: Exercise, Food/Drink, Middle Age, Misc. Humor, Posts, Travel | Tags: Cats, dogs, drinking, Exercise, health, hiking, Middle-Age, Outlander, resolutions, Scotland, travel, yoga
(Not that any of you should even remotely care what my resolutions are this year, I thought maybe you could use some ideas.)
Dear Self –
Learn to pay in cash – not only will you save money, but the super-annoying “Remove Card” buzzer when using the debit card will no longer send you over the edge in Food Kitty
Do yoga in the living room – just because it humiliates you that Sting’s 
wife is 63 years old and can twist herself like a pretzel is no excuse for you not doing her yoga DVD that you spent $20 on
Sleep more – that means stop playing Candy Crush in bed – you’re the only person on the planet who’s still doing it
Stop playing games on phone…except at stop lights…and while watching tv…and while waiting for the fam to go anywhere…and while Hubby’s driving…
Write more family-friendly blogs
Start anonymous blog page so you can write about the fam
Save money for hiking trip in Scotland (a.k.a. satisfy Outlander fetish)
Run a 10k
Run a 5k
Walk every day
Walk once a week
Hike once a month to train for hiking trip in Scotland
Drink only on weekends…or when out socially…or after a really, really crappy day at work…or when the cats pee in the house…or when the recipe requires wine…
Stop cooking with recipes requiring wine
Be nicer to the dogs
Be nicer to the cats
Filed under: Exercise, Middle Age, Misc. Humor | Tags: adulthood, breaking up, breakups, couch potato, couples, dating, family, gym, health, humor, love, Marriage, Middle-Age, narcissist, reachers, relationships, settlers, sex, subourbonmom, Twilight
Daughter #1 recently informed our family that on the TV show How I Met Your Mother, they talked about how in every relationship there’s a Reacher and a Settler.
Reachers are in a relationship with someone who is out of their league. Settlers are with someone they believe may be inferior to them, either intellectually or physically – think Christie Brinkley and Billy Joel, or for those of you under the age of 40, Jason Sudeikis and Olivia Wilde.
Ok, ok, if you want to be intellectual about it, it could be anyone of normal intelligence who has married a genius of any kind.
So I started wondering: If this is true, what relationships would work better and longer?
Reacher + Settler: A lawyer once said, “You know 10’s don’t date 2’s, right?” Well, in my opinion, if they do it’s most likely not going to work, for two reasons:
1. There rarely are 10’s. Some people may think they’re a 10, but chances are they’re not. I’m not just talking about looks here – you can be a 10 in the personality department, or a be a 2 (a total D-bag). Either way, it probably won’t last.
2. These relationships are doomed from the start, unless the Settler (the 10) is a narcissist and the Reacher (the 2) has absolutely no self-esteem whatsoever, and they stay that way. In this type of relationship, Reachers will let their well-being be dictated by their desire to be needed by the Settler.
Think of Bella, the character in the Twilight movies. She is the Reacher (a young girl who is completely attracted to the all-powerful vampire), and Edward, the vampire, is the Settler. (Yes, I know what happened in the books at the end – more on that later). If their relationship had stayed the same, she would eventually have become just a blood supply to him.
Settler + Settler: This would appear on the surface to work, except that the relationship will become toxic. Eventually, both Settlers’ feelings of superiority allow them to convince themselves they are right, or at least that the other is wrong. In a relationship between two Settlers, each thinks the other must be a Reacher, and therefore must be inferior/wrong. “Asshole”, “arrogant” and “egotistical” are a couple of favorite words for two Settlers to sling about when they fight. Try to imagine what would happen if Kanye West or Taylor Swift got together, or even better, Hillary and The Donald.
Toxic.
Reacher + Reacher: This is the best combination. Two Reachers will be convinced they don’t deserve the other person, and will treat each other well. Back to Bella and Edward – by the end of the series, both become Reachers. Once Bella is made into a vampire, their unique vampire abilities put them on equal footing. Plus, both are so screwed up emotionally (she’s horrifically repressed, and he’s got some bizarre emotional need to be with a girl one tenth his age) they will never consider themselves Settlers. That said, most of the marriages I know that have lasted a long time have done so because both people are self-aware enough to know they are flawed, and that not many people in the world could put up with their shit the way their spouse has for the last decade or two.
But what if the dynamic changes? What if one of the two Reachers turns into a Settler? It happens. Think of the Couch Potato-turned-Gym Rat. The Couch Potato, who is in a relationship with another Couch Potato, should be happy (according to my theory) – until the Couch Potato decides she no longer wants to be a Couch Potato (because she watched the Twilight series too many times), and begins working out in the gym. Soon she’s rockin’ the six pack and has a whole new set of Gym Rat friends. She starts to look down on her Couch Potato, and becomes in her mind, a Settler. So, we are back to the first scenario: Reacher + Settler.
Does this mean people aren’t allowed to change and grow in their relationship? Of course not. It does, however, mean that both people have to communicate, and never stop growing and trying new things. Children try new things every day and grow exponentially. It’s one of the reasons they are so interesting to watch. Adults have a harder time trying new things, out of fear of looking ridiculous of being uncomfortable. But not trying anything new means not growing.
Trying something new doesn’t have to mean hiking the Appalachian Trail or learning to pole dance at age 50; it can be something as simple as taking an online class about underwater basket weaving, writing a blog, or starting a business from your home. When one person in the relationship stops growing and trying new things, they automatically become a Reacher. If both people stop trying new things, they become…Al Bundy.
Subourbon Mom 