Shee-nanigans: That Party Report

I don't know what was weirder: how vanilla this "passion party" was; or how weird the world would be had it NOT been so vanilla. If you follow.

Exhibit A: The thing I'm holding in this picture. It's a feather tickler on one end and the world's tiniest, most adorable riding crop on the other. It's like a sex toy for an American Girl doll. (Probably that new Marie-Grace, amiright?) I smacked my tennis friend over and over again as hard as I could--you know, like you do--and I don't think she even felt it.

(Exhibit B, an unrelated exhibit: Those are my new fancy jeans. Matt took me out on Saturday afternoon and I tried on a zillion pairs of incredibly tight jeans for my now-skinnier bohiney. It was the world's most awesome date, y'all. My kind of romance. The bad phone picture makes the color/fade on them look really extreme, but it's not. Where was I? This might be another post. Definitely.)

I'm getting ahead of my story. Pretty Neighbor and her hubs played a quick set of tennis with Matt and me Saturday night before the party. She and I were into going to meet and greet--it was just around the corner--but we weren't sure we were up for the spray tan. Logistically, getting a full-body spray tan in the middle of this event was seeming like a hassle to me. The invitation suggested wearing dark, loose clothing so the tan solution wouldn't stain them, and even said, "Just come in your bathrobe!" Both PN and I were like, ah, no thanks. I was all, "I don't want to go to a party in my pajamas, I want to go in these new jeans I just got that I can only stand up in!" So we decided we might bring sweats to change into post-tan, because I was curious about the tanning, having never had one.

Honestly, Reader, it was knowing that I needed to get the full experience to report to you that spurred me on. You make me want to be a better (wo)man.

So PN and I calculated that the proper arrival time was 30 minutes after the start time given on the invite, and we sidled over and picked up our tennis friend T. Now, T had told me that she wouldn't be tanning because she wasn't into the nakedness required, but then she comes out of her house in actual jammies and slippers, saying "I hope I'm not the only one in pajamas!"

Well, T needn't have worried. We were greeted at the door of a beautiful house by our hostess, who was clad in--and I would never kid you about this--fleece, leopard-print footie pajamas that zipped from her crotch to her neck. As she welcomed us inside, we said, "Have you already tanned?" and she pulled us under a brighter light and then unzipped her jammies. Unzipped them rather a lot. We admired her golden-brown boob, and then I was like, "Oh goodness, shall I just leave my purse right here?" and "I'll just find a place to put this wine."

It was a very Just Us Gals moment and it set the tone perfectly for what was to come.

Then we joined the party and PN caught a glimpse of the sex toy presenter lady, who had a little table and a giant pink suitcase full of her wares, and was like, "Oh, I know her." She was super nice, Columbian, outgoing, and plays A2 level tennis. So we chatted with her and took in the scene. Lots of nice food and probably forty girls there, many of them in their pajamas.

Pretty Neighbor and a Giant Bundt Candle

It was certainly raucous. At one point, prompted by what I don't know, our leopard-footied hostess raised her voice and proclaimed, a little heatedly, to everyone, "I don't have a dildo, I don't need a dildo, I don't want a dildo, I am a GOOD CATHOLIC GIRL." PN and I risked neck injury by whipping around to look at each other. It was a rich instant of human life. If I didn't have a blog, one would have sprung fully-formed into existence right then, willed by the exigencies of the moment. I'll just note that it seemed rather like protesting too much.

Eventually we all perched on the furniture in the living room for the "passion party" portion. This was where, EVEN HERE, my congenital need to be the good student surfaced. The presenter lady was having a hard time being heard over the outbreaks of laughter and general rowdiness. As you might imagine. So I wanted to show my best respectful listening, and I even had the Hermione Granger impulse to be like, "SHHHH! You guys! She's talking about PHEREMONES! This is IMPORTANT!" I didn't though.

But it led to the presenter having to raise her voice and basically scream, "LADIES, GOD HAS BLESSED US WITH A CLITORIS!" Those were her exact words. And all the people said amen. She said it several times for different products.

From the catalog

So, the products. This was really interesting to me, to see how this was all presented. The catalog starts (and her spiel started) firmly in the familiar discursive space of self-pampering. Ladies, ya gotta take care of yourselves and find pleasure in everyday activities like bathing, grooming, etc. Body lotions, oils, and sprays with names like Entice and Glow can ease the drudgery of living. Everything is an "experience" or a "transformative escape" that will make you feel "deliciously irresistible." This should tell you what it was like, this first part: there was a pack of 100 silk rose petals for you to strew on your sheets (and clean up after, I suppose). They came with four tealight candles and "an invitation for your lover." T bought them.

Every product was lickable or edible. She went around and squirted some kind of goo on everyone's fingers and was like, "Try it!" I was like, "Uh no way am I EATING that stuff that just came out of that tube." I mean, I am game for just about whatever, but please.

It all smelled pretty good. Mangosteen is an important fragrance in this world.

Okay, so there were these various unguents, then some lube, which seemed pretty good, then more products that make your skin tingle in various ways and locations. One of them is called Nympho Niagra. Believe.

Then we broke for more wine before she brought out the big guns.

First we looked at these little chapbooks. Tickle His Pickle and Tickle Your Fancy. The pickle one promised, improbably, 50 ways to tickle that pickle. (Cue Paul Simon? "Ya just blow some air, Claire.")

I apologize. For this whole post. If you have better gags please share. I am truly over my head here.

The Tickle Your Fancy book was For Us, and contained hints for "self-pleasure and "awareness." LADIES, GOD HAS BLESSED US...

So Pretty Neighbor had the most concise critique of the night, I thought, when she observed, "Hey, in the pickle book it's all pictures of the woman pleasing the man, and in the girl's book it's all pictures of her by herself. Doesn't anyone wanna help her tickle her fancy?" Yes, truly. That was the overall tone of much of what was presented: spicing up your sex life is a DIY project, ladies.

Okay, I got to hand it to the copywriters of this catalog, and to whomever trains the sales presenters, they get through the whole shebang and never, never say any ugly words. They are at particular pains to avoid "blowjob." The preferred term is "oral favor." Which I actually found kind of sweet. I don't know. I was into my third glass of wine by that point.

One of the little vibrators plugs into a USB. And one looked like a lipstick. Everything comes with cute drawstring sacks so the cleaning lady doesn't have to see it. One had a suction cup base, and she stuck it to the mantle. I took a picture but I don't want that picture looking at me on the front page of my blog for days and days.

I also took a picture of Pretty Neighbor holding a really complicated dildo in each hand, but she hissed, "Don't you dare put that on your blog!"

Presented without comment and I will not answer questions, Mom.

So I said this whole thing was vanilla, but you know, by the end, if you flip to the back pages of the catalog, the train takes you straight to Funkytown. The product range passes through every kind of dildo--all the Sex and the City girls ones--and gets right into what most people would think of as kinky.

Before it gets there, though, it passes through silly. When I was telling Matt about the whole night, I got as far as, "There's a c**k ring that looks like a Goodyear tire," and he burst into a giggle of pure joy. Like a child on Christmas morning.

And as unlikely as it seems, that product is reversible? There is also pink duct tape.

Then, at length, properly prepared and educated in the worlds of exploration and escape, we arrive at the section entitled, "A New Sensation!" You get me. (I don't want those searchable terms on my blog forever and ever.) And here I must say, Mom and Dad, that I had no idea what it was talking about and I flipped through a copy of Readers Digest Condensed Books instead. I mean, I knew what all the words meant but not when put together in that way!

Okay, I'm lying on the fainting couch now.

Now I'm back.

And Lord, the hooting and hollering at every moment of this.

This post is already way, way WAY too long and I haven't even gotten to the tanning! Which was seriously a whole separate experience. Tomorrow! There is no way you have read this far!

Wishing you pleasure and awareness.
xo

Errands

I just got back from taking the kids up the road towards the mountain house, where they will spend the weekend with my parents. I met my dad at the halfway point. Or, in one version of the story that could be told, I drove fifteen miles past the meeting point and had to turn around and come back.

My version of the story is more complex. It has to do with Demorest, GA, the planned rendezvous point, being not very well marked coming from the south, and my thinking I was somehow passing through Cornelia when I was passing through both towns, somehow, and then I was introducing Hank and Laura to Tenacious D and I wasn't as super duper alert to the signage as I might have been, though I will say that sign was in a weird place, like way up over the road instead of off to the right where I was looking.

I called my dad as I was approaching Cornelia. "Okay, I'm almost to Cornelia. Is Demorest a lot past that?" (Here you might be thinking, "Becky, don't you make this trip, from your house to the mountain house, all the time?" Yes, yes I do, but it's remarkably hard to remember what comes after what except that the Goats on the Roof are just before Clayton, and some ways before that is a Subway/gas station with the World's Dirtiest Bathroom, and there's a Chick-fil-A in Clayton (closed Sunday), and somewhere past Franklin there's that Walmart we went in that one time to buy Legos. That's my mental map of the route.)

So when I called Dad he said, "Yes, Demorest is up the road past Cornelia, I'm in Tallulah Gorge right now, and I'll be at the spot in fifteen minutes." Cool, okay, I rang off and motored right along until all of a sudden I found myself in Tallulah Gorge. I figured that space had somehow twisted itself, mobius-fashion, and I had wound up on the far side of the meeting point without ever going through the meeting point.

It was with genuine bewilderment that I called him again and said, "What just happened? I am in Tallulah somehow. I am not sure what to do." Dad drew on the patience and clarity that he honed during his thirty years as an educator. "Uh, turn around? Go the other way," he explained. Then he gave a series of instructions involving mile markers and an Arby's, and I got the car pointed in the other direction and found him.

Sometimes I just like to go driving around Georgia.

On the way home, by myself, in the afterglow of a jamocha milkshake, I was thinking about that phrase, "the Sandwich Generation," for people who find themselves being caregivers for older parents while still having kids at home. It's related, I guess, both to the trends of aged folks living longer and to people waiting until later to start their families. For some reason it came to my mind, and I thought how I feel like I'm in a sandwich too, only it's a good sandwich that makes my life easy. I have these children I love and am enjoying bringing up, and yet I still feel as nurtured by my own parents as I did when I was a little girl. It's a happy sandwich and I am grateful for it.

I came home to Matt, both of us ready to commence our childless weekend, and before we could, one of his artists was leaving and broke his car key. So Matt is right now driving him home while I wait. Artists, man. Seriously, they can barely keep their shit together. This is the guy who got his car stuck in our front yard one time. Jeebus. I don't know what it is.

Not really artists, jk! You know I love you!

But that errand gave me a chance to pop in and say Happy Friday to you guys.

I hope you get yourself into a good sandwich this weekend.

xoxo

I Actually Think Mondays Are Fine

This morning, while Hank was in preschool, I was sitting on the couch in my sun room drinking coffee and watching Novak Djokovic in the Australian Open. Yes, I hear you saying, "Becky, you work too hard. You need to slow down and take some time for yourself. You can't do anything for your family if you don't take care of yourself first." I agree with you, I do. But all that tennis is not going to watch itself.

It was pouring rain. I had just spied Hank's fuzzy crocs lying outside by the trampoline, absorbing twenty times their weight in water. I thought about going to fetch them. Then I had some other idea--can't remember but it didn't involve going out in the rain so I pursued that train of thought.

The game company boys appeared one by one. I greeted them and they trouped downstairs to their basement lair.

Matt appeared and I made him an omelette. He took it downstairs.

It's just a blog about nothin'.

Then I cleaned the kitchen, all while squinting and peering across to the TV screen. Please someone get busy doing the academic work on the spectacle that is the male tennis player's body in current celebrity sports culture. The tension between their much-vaunted machismo and the dwelling upon their fragile, injury-prone physiques. Those accumulated minutes and even hours of extreme slow-motion close ups. I mean, I think we know what they all look like naked. Juan Martin del Potro, call me.

(OMG, I just looked him up and he's only 23. Sorry Juan, stay in school, sonny! But I also just learned that he is 6'6", holy cats. So many feelings!)

Then I did bring in Hank's crocs.

Then I laundered things, and folded the things, all while watching the playing of the tennis. Then my phone made its little twinkling noise and I saw this text from my mother, "ETA: 2:30, rain is terrible." I was like, "Huh?" Then I realized that despite knowing that my parents were passing through town and stopping by my house, despite having talked to them about it the night before and having reminded the kids about it, I managed to forget it entirely in the time it took to brew a pot of coffee.

Then Lleyton Hewitt managed to take Djokovic to a fourth set, and I was like, "Guys, I have to go get Hank." But Djokovic won just in time and I wheeled the minivan over there through the rain. Hank got into the car chattering to his teacher about his grandparents coming by. So he remembered.

Then, back at home, I hauled the vacuum cleaner up the stairs and hoovered around. Then I did the downstairs, while making Hank fully a dozen PB&J sandwiches. Laura came in complaining about my not having met her at the bus stop to drive her the fifty yards to our front door. I offered her a shot of Toughen-Up. It wasn't actually raining anymore, geez.

Then she brandished a speech she has written for an oratory contest. The mandated topic for everyone is How Optimism Helps Me Overcome Obstacles. Laura writing a speech about optimism is like hearing what a bird thinks about feathers. She read it to me in the kitchen. It had some good moments and was written in her natural voice. I was surprised, though, that among her anecdotes, she mentioned my treatment for breast cancer, and said that my hair fell out and that I "wore a wig for a few weeks." A few weeks! I wonder if that seven months seems like a few weeks to her.

Then Mom and Dad did appear, bringing a dining room chair of mine they'd fixed and a huge bag of broccoli from our friend's farm. They stayed for just a little while; I couldn't get them to spend the night, they wanted to get up to the mountains to pursue their own selfish desires. Plus they left with my boxed series of The Wire on DVD.

Oh! But they didn't leave without my extracting their promise to take the kids to North Carolina this weekend, while Matt and I stay home and pursue OUR selfish desires.

Then I ate some sardines and avocado, then parented a bit more, then I went and worked out with Pretty Neighbor, and then I came home and it was time for Taco Night. After the last of Matt's guys left, I opened the door to the basement stairs and hollered, "TACO TOWN!"

Then we ate a bunch of food and then Matt and I lovingly logged it in our calorie-counting website together. I mean, we're still fun, right?

Then Matt wrestled the kids and I lay down with Hank for a few minutes. Then I had a cup of coffee with a tablespoon of unsweetened cocoa powder in it.

That is literally just what I did today. It was very ordinary, so what better place to relive it than here in my blog? It comprises my world. It was also a good day. As my sister would say, I didn't even have to use my AK.

Hey, look up at the top of my page on the left. Beth made me a couple of facebook/twitter buttons. So you can click on the facebook one and "like" SubMat on facebook! I mean, if you like me like that. Then you will never, ever miss any news of the tennis-watching, sardine-eating variety.

You have my love,
B

I Say Yes To A Bunch of That!

I spend a fair amount of time fending off invitations to things in my neighborhood that are called parties but don't really sound like parties to me. You know, like buy-this-fancy-ice-cream-scooper-that-you-can't-put-in-the-dishwasher parties, pay-money-to-try-this-bad-make-up parties, and then there's bunco. Lordy, the bunco.

This morning, though, I got an email from my gravelly-voiced tennis friend inviting me to a dildo party. It is not strictly called a dildo party, it has some name like Celestial Throbbings or similar. I'm being for serious, the name is something like that. This is a first for this neighborhood, as far as I know. Most (okay all) of my friends, whatever their private proclivities, are too genteel or reticent to host such a thing. But this is the bunco crowd and they are a little harder-partying. Like, some of them smoke cigarettes. Which is basically not done in this sphere anymore, ever.  

So I was all, "Dildo party, that's funny," and then I got to the best part. It's not only a dildo party, it's a spray tan party! The invite promises:

I have a woman coming to the house and she will set up in my master bedroom and one by one we will go upstairs and get gorgeous spray tans. It's only twenty dollars and trust me she won't miss a spot. 

I don't want to quote the invitation at greater length, but I do want to convey to you that the whole communication, everything about it--diction, font choice and size, grammar and punctuation, everything--just exudes a past-its-prime good timey-ness that is a real breath of beery air. The hostess closes the invitation by saying, "The men would kill to be a fly on the wall at this party--LMFAO!" Then there really needed to be a belch emoticon, if one existed.

When I read this, I hollered "YEEEEEESSSSS!" My neighbors perusing sex toys and going upstairs "one by one" to be thoroughly spray tanned? No way will I miss the chance to go to this event so I can describe the scene for you. No way. I take my commitment to you guys too seriously for that, you can be sure, so relax. I'm on it. 

So that's happening. And Matt and I have mixed doubles match tomorrow if it doesn't rain. Here it is after nine and my kids are still running free through the house. I'm going to go S that D. xoxo-B

It's A Vulnerable Time

Most nights I lie down in Hank's room for a few minutes when he goes to bed. This is a nice time in many ways, as I get to stop moving for the first time in a while and Hank shares what's on his mind. (Last night's tidbits were, "Mom, I know what snot is for and also what its real name is," and "Dad says one of the hardest things of all is to imagine what it's like to be somebody else." Both important topics for reflection.) Then, after he falls asleep in mid sentence, I have a few minutes of quiet reading time.

So while this is a good part of the day mentally and emotionally, somehow biologically or physiologically (biorhythmically?) it has some not good effects. I lie down pleasantly full from supper--not too full--and feeling good about the food choices I made all day. I get up wanting to eat All The Things. Somehow in that few minutes, I shift phases from having been sufficiently nourished for the day into someone who would gladly rob a Hostess Twinkie truck. It's a good thing I don't have a gun.

It's a particular desire for something sweet that I know has to be related to tiredness and is not a dietary need at all. I don't have much of a sweet tooth at other times. Usually there is no junk food in the house, phew! So I can be satisfied by drinking my nightly cup of tea and maybe eating a few almonds. Those cocoa almonds are good for this.

It's possible that this is my body telling me I need to be going to bed at that time, but I am a terrible and habitual night owl.

Anyway. I'm coming to how the marital dialogue portion of this story. But first a detour through another part of our bedtime routine in this house. You'd might as well move in.

Matt and the kids have nightly wrestles up on our big bed. But the term "wrestle" is now a sort of catch-all for a range of activities that includes, but is not limited to, charades, trivia, tickling, interpretive dance, and physical challenges. It is their thing and I never witness it, I just hear the hollering and thumping. It has grown and gotten more ritualized and complicated, to the point where he now makes bets with them about different things and, the following day, doles out small rewards for amazing feats. I'm sure it's normal to have one's children perform for treats?

Which leads to the fact that he bought a bunch of 90%-off Christmas candy and hid it on a high shelf in the book room, for parceling out to them over time. Like, a really high shelf that I can't reach, and I wasn't even sure exactly which shelf it was.

So the other night I stumbled downstairs, having grown drowsy in Hank's room and developed a fairly raging craving for one small treat.

I cut right to the chase, "Where is that candy you got? I want one piece of it."

And he smiles and starts to get all "Oh you want candy! Well let's discuss this situation." Like, not in a lascivious way, or not only that way, but he's all ready for us to have the little kitchen flirtation moment we have after the kids are in bed and we can relax out of our day roles into different roles. I can change from having been super competent all day to wanting to be indulged and he can refocus his attention away from work, and then we can move on with our pursuits, severally or together. You know the kitchen moment I'm talking about.

But I had a monkey on my back and I did not want to play. I was like, "Give me the candy. Give it to me now. Please." Which he thinks is hilarious. And I can see how ridiculous I am being but I can't help it. I said, "GIVE ME THE CANDY. I don't want to play." And now he is getting the candy down from the shelf, while attempting to poke gentle fun at me and I am not having it, so I escalate by saying, "I don't get it. Are you hiding the candy from the kids or from me? Or from yourself? I DON'T GET THE WHOLE NARRATIVE OF THE CANDY."

"Oh ho!" Now he is just enjoying himself. "You don't get the narrative of the candy? Is that your PhD talking?" And then I am just wounded because that is a totally normal way to talk about something. Everything has a narrative of what it is and why it's where it is and oh never mind! Give me the candy.

Then, perhaps wounded himself by my stiff-arming his attempts to be playful, he brings the whole bag of candy into the kitchen and sits it on the counter. I take a piece and punish him by avoiding eye contact. Until two seconds later when I come to my senses and look at him and shrug. I apologize for being a crazy person. And somehow the whole thing serves as our kitchen moment anyway.

He has been married to me for almost seventeen years.

What are y'all up to? Any narratable kitchen moments?

xo

I'd Take That Bargain

I had a nice exchange with my sis-in-law as she was passing through town on Friday.

I died. Then I texted her, "I just died."

Speaking of technology, and of my brother and sister-in-law, AND of things that practically lay me in my grave:

Not long ago, Dave mentioned on the facebook that he and Katie had spent a whole year with a laptop keyboard on which the 'p' and 'n' keys didn't work, but they had finally taken it to the Apple store, where it was fixed quickly and for free. I realized I faintly remembered this problem from when we visited them in DC in April, that their 'p' and 'n' keys didn't work. And this is their only computer, mind you.

Fjords! I mean, I can't even, it's too much.

Then he went on to say that when he needed a 'p,' either lower- or upper-case, he would google "Obama" because that would get him "President." Then I was like ARGLE BARGLE and I blacked out.

Blacked out with delight.

We are such tool-using monkeys.

Someone PLEASE devise an alphabet primer composed of the best google search for seeking out each letter, from A-Z, keeping in mind that the search terms cannot contain the broken letter. Please do that. Where are we on that?

What Is The Opposite of Birth Control?

Is it this?

Because, dang.

I mean, seriously.

My nephew Gabriel almost makes me forget all my stuff about how I'm so glad my kids are older and getting more independent and blah blah blah...look at all that soft baby chub!

My own kids are cute, too, I guess, if you like them all big like that. Their legs are really long and they talk constantly.

LJ got a cover for her tennis racquet.

Hank got most of the Legos in the world.

Just didn't want to let the Christmas season go by without sharing a few pics. More are here.

If you have been persuaded by viewing the adorable baby, it is Saturday night! Go get on it! And be sure to report back!

xoxo
b

Good and Bad Behavior on The Tennis Team

A fan letter Laura wrote. Roger always behaves beautifully.

So Matt and I have joined a mixed doubles team in our neighborhood. It just started up this fall, and it's made up of several of my buddies from the ladies' team and their husbands. First match is Sunday. The captain is my gravelly-voiced, rough around the edges, bunco-playing, into everything acquaintance. Friend? For me, familiarity always breeds fondness, so I would say we are friends by now. I've gotten used to her basically abrasive approach to the world.

Most of my girl pals joined the team in hopes of actually being partnered with their husbands. I thought that was the normal way to do things in mixed doubles, especially a C-level team, but apparently it's not, and it's up to the captain to pair men and women based on ability, not on who goes home together. Okay, I had an inkling of that, but I figured Matt and I would get to play together in a match sometimes. But my good buddy T--the one who uses the face cream made of foreskins--has chafed against this protocol, and when the line-up for Sunday was released, which had her and her husband playing in different lines with other people, she was upset.

She texted me that night after practice:

I hate the line-up.  I wanted to play with my husband so we could do something together. This freakin' swingers' tennis sux.

I laughed at "swingers' tennis" (coming to a suburb near you!) but I figured she just needed to vent. Well.

Then yesterday morning, she copied me on this email that she sent to the captain:

[Hubs] and I wanted to play mixed double in order to do something together and this is not headed in that direction. The first few practices were great - rotating around- but as of the last couple of practices, we don't get to play together at all; I could understand you breaking us up if we didn't play well together, but we do; therefore the line-up doesn't make sense to us either. But I guess it doesn't have to because you are the captain, which was apparent in your attitude last night.  If we were regular members of the team, we would suck it up and finish the season, but we are only alternates so we will play this Sunday and then we are done. If you decide you don't want us this weekend (which is probably now the case), just let me know.

Well, when I read that, I said, "Whoa." I don't think I'm overreacting in saying that, down here, in our cultural register, this is a relationship-severing email, especially for people who are just casual friends. T is a sweet girl, and I sympathized with her position and the impulse that led her to write that, but I would not have written that, and would have tried some honey instead.

All I said in response was, "Well, you definitely got your point across! Let me know what she says." Then Pretty Neighbor and I were all, "OMG, the captain is going to spray weed killer on her lawn." We anticipated lots of huffiness and hurt feelings all around. I was especially thinking that this would lead to an awkward Spring ladies season, as neither of those two are about to quit that team.

But gravelly-voiced friend surprised me. T forwarded her reply and it was:

Sorry for the misunderstanding about being able to play together all the time in the ALTA team. You and he will be able to play together some of the time. This week we need him to play line two and he could have been line one this week based on everyone’s availability. 

When [husband] and I want to play together we play either T2 or Ultimate. (We get too much time together sometimes ;-) 

We want you to play. You come to the practices all the time and that’s why you are in the line-up. We understand if you don’t want to continue playing, though. ;-( Let me know.

Tennis Captain has obviously imbibed the lesson that A Soft Answer Turneth Away Wrath. I have not been giving her enough credit. I was impressed that she didn't rise to the bitchy bait. And T forwarded me her reply and said something like, "Well! Okay then!"

And for me this is just a continuing exploration of how, as I get older, if I basically like a person and think she's decent, I'm willing to put up with some of her shit and it's no big deal. Especially a casual friend who doesn't live under my roof. Both these girls have had instances of Imperfect Conduct, and so have I. Yet I still enjoy moving in their circles. So whatever, here's to bitching out sometimes.

The email I sent to Pretty Neighbor about this was titled OMG TENNIS DRAMAZ!!!!1

We are enjoying ourselves here in the burbs.
xo
b

PS: Book club is next week. Yes!

Somebody Better Undeck Some Halls

And I guess it will be me. We got back home last night from our holiday travels and today I'm staring Real Life square in the face. Unflinching! Being home will be good for my continuing plan to eat sensibly and healthily, as ham and frosting should not be the base of one's food pyramid.

The kids don't go back to school until Thursday, which is nice. Laura is making use of the last few days of vacation. This afternoon, she has rehearsed her talent show number with one friend and is now ice skating with another. Hank and I are about to play with his new Legos. I'm going to try to play with him at the same time that I clear the dining room table of Christmas decorations.

All that stuff will be put away today.

Speaking of which, did I ever show you my Marimekko panels after I got them hung in the dining room? I love how they look in there. My mom and dad helped me get them placed right, and it was like taking the math portion of the GRE. We didn't have any fancy lasers or picture hanging tools like that though. Have we already had this conversation?

So today needs to be spent tidying and regrouping and other acts of domestic administration. Are your kids still out of school?

I leave you with a brief video of Hank and Matt's stunt from the weekend.



xoxo
b