the slack daily

Happy Daisy Makeoutz Day.

Pictures from my last three Halloweens:

2004. Daisy as bat and me dressed, well, normally.  For my Halloween Cocktail Party.  (And no, that's not a wig.)

2005.  For the Zombie Dinner Party.  Me dressed as Zombie Starlet, Daisy dressed as Zombie Petey from the Little Rascals. (And that is a wig.)

2006.  For my Halloween Hangout. Daisy dressed as the Devil, me dressed as, well, me.

2007 marks the first year that I haven't had a party, although I certainly have plenty to celebrate. Maybe I'll don that Princess Leia outfit and Mr. Boy and I will----oh, dammit.  Maybe I won't. 

Another year of Daisy Makeoutz for me!

The Politics of Blogging.

Nearly fifty weeks ago I was chatting with Will online when I told him I wouldn't date him because not only was he a better writer than I was, but his blog was more popular than mine.  I couldn't live with the jealousy. Of course, this was the same week that he told me he'd wipe out an entire race of people just to sleep with me once. 

Now we're married without him having to resort to mass genocide.  However, only one of my initial protests still remains true.  He's still a better writer than I am.  However, I have somehow surpassed him in the blog statistics war. 

Will's the first Real Blogger I'd ever dated.  It was a relief not to have to explain the existence of a large chunk of my life online for all to see over cocktails, to have someone immediately understand when I talked about online friends and people who read and sharing the Story Behind the Story.  The more I read the more I was charmed and the more I didn't understand why every woman on the Internet didn't have a crush on Mr. Boy, writer of robots and porn and pancakes.  (And why I do understand that I receive anonymous hate mail from one of his former and/or current readers as a result.) 

The other day, as we were passing the laptop back and both playing Scrabulous and checking our webstats, he said to me I don't understand why my readership has dropped.  I didn't either, considering that mine has nearly doubled in the past year.  I looked over his past month of posts and said you know, you don't write personally anymore.  It's more about music and robots and links to other blogs.  You used to share more about what was going on inside your head, and I think maybe people miss that.

I'm doing something I've never done before, and that's discussing something here than I haven't discussed with him first.  I wonder if he doesn't write that way because of the hate mail.  I understand the desire not to give anyone ammunition to use against you.  Or, more to the point, against me.  But the act of being okay with sharing it, putting it out there in the bright light of day, that's what takes those bullets and turns them into blanks.  I don't always look pretty and I don't always come out the hero but I always come out with a lesson, even if it's hey everyone, look at me, I'm a moron.

Of course, I could totally be wrong.  Maybe it's a gender-roles thing.  Maybe it's okay for women to be vulnerable while men should only write about porn and robots and pancakes.  I don't know.  I wish we could both quit our jobs and blog professionally, but I think that only happens in the movies.  Either way, I still think he's a better writer than I am.  So go read Will's blog.  It'll give him something to talk about in therapy.

The Fatmistress.

About eight years ago  I was working as an assistant to my friend and mentor, S., and  we had an office over at Disney.  We shared a suite with a few other writers and directors, and actors, casting agents, and network people were always wandering around the hallways.  One morning I headed into the ladies' room to find wall-to-wall women, all thin, all blonde, all pretty, all 20-25, all crowded in front of the mirror chattering nervously.  As I walked through the door, conversation screeched to a halt and least twelve pairs of blue eyes started to size me up. 

I'm not the Casting Director, I announced to the room.  Conversation started up again and I got in line to use the facilities.

What do you do? asked the girl behind me in line. 

Oh, I'm a writer, I told her, lying just a little bit.

You're lucky, she replied.  No one cares what you look like.

...

The most frequent insult I read in the bulk of my hate mail is you're fat. It's not always simply you're-fat, sometimes I get hey-fattie or you-pig or in the case of this weekend's missive, the fatmistress (I'll award points for creativity.)   Hurled at someone else it's almost always an insult, used to describe yourself it's almost always an apology.  It's the  It's the last insult, colorblind and classblind.  While men appropriate it from time to time, it's a unique part of the female lexicon - as J.K. Rowling once said, fat is usually the first insult a girl throws at another girl when she wants to hurt her. Fat is synonymous for a whole host of other words. Fat stands for Failure. Fat stands for Hate.  Fat is fists flying in the fight at the bikeracks after school. 

Whether or not I am or I am not fat isn't the point, as I reside firmly in the no-(wo)man's land of the size-ten-to-twelve, so fat as a descriptive adjective is all in the perspective of the beholder.  There is probably someone out there reading this right now who would like to be my size at the same time another reader is thanking her lucky stars that she's not.  No matter who's the target, fat will always remain the weapon of choice in the insult arsenal because of its easy application and laserlike accuracy.  It's curious to me that in a universe where women complain about the impossible standards of beauty, of waiflike actresses and airbushed images of supposed perfection, the fat grenade is still thrown with such frequency.  My guess is you throw it one too many times, it's bound to blow up in your face.

...

Of course, out here in Blogland, we hang our own damn selves out to dry.  I can't really complain when I'm the one controlling the flow of information.  No one's forcing me to post pictures or share intimate details of my life.  It's a choice.  And I can't have it both ways, I can't want to be noticed and then get upset when someone notices me.  I won't say that the first time I was called fat by a hate mailer it didn't hurt, but after the first ten-of-so times it just gets old.  If the worst thing someone can say about me is I'm fat, then I'm probably doing okay.

Vaginaface Minus an Hour.

Last Night, 5:30pm:

We're getting ready to go to TDR's and TAB's Pumpkin-Carving Party.  Will's in the shower, I'm, erm, taking care of some personal grooming.

Will looks at me.  Is that my razor?

Yeah, it gives me a closer shave.

He grimaces.  I wish you wouldn't do that.

Why?  It's not like I'm sticking it in my butt.

I know.

I rinse it out when I'm done, I buy the replacement blades---

It'll give me vaginaface.

It'll give you what?

Vaginaface!

You know that I do this so it's less messy for when you, you know, actually have your face in my vagina.

I know.

So you understand how ludicrous this sounds?

Vaginaface!

At least my hair - on my head - looked cute.

This morning, 9:30am...or is that 10:30am?:

After two parties and a late-night stop at Jan's (because I need a gyro at 1:00am, and can I also ask, why does a diner need a website?) we came home and crawled into bed.  I was dead asleep until Will ran into the room.

We lost an hour!  We lost an hour!

What? I rub the sleep from my eyes.  Slow down.

This is the day you set the clocks ahead.

Okay, if we're doing anything to the clocks, we're setting them back.

No, no, I was working at my computer and it says 9:30 but my cell says 10:30.  It's ahead!

I slowly retain consciousness.  No, Will, it's spring ahead, fall behind.  And I'm pretty sure it's next week.  Your computer is just dumb and prematurely set your clock behind.  I pad into the kitchen.  The microwave and the kitchen clock both read 10:30am.

Normally it's this weekend, but for some reason it's next weekend, I tell him.

Are you sure?

I grab the computer and quickly Google it.  Yes, I'm sure, next week.

Oh, okay. You can go back to bed.

I raise an eyebrow.

Or, you can uh, lay there on the couch and watch the Bears game and I'll go get us coffee and how about I make dinner tonight?

Now you're beginning to make sense.

And Now For Something Completely Different...

Well, kinda different.

Things That Have Made Me Laugh During the Past Few Days:

We just saved a bundle on a college education!

Dammit, now we don't have a little white baby to sell for meth.

Only buttsex from here on out.

I think you have SuperSperm.

Uhhh, congratulations on your miscarriage?

I love you both...you're writers fill in the rest of what I'm saying with all the best shit you can think of.

Miscarriage equals audience!  My stats are through the roof!

...

Thank you all for your emails and phone calls and comments.  I have to say that I'm glad I wrote about it, but I think it would have been less revealing to post naked photos of myself.*

*You're still not getting these.

Whereupon the Slackmistress Gets Serious for a Second.

I've been struggling for the past week wondering if I should blog this or not.  While it's not my policy to intentionally hide things, it's also my policy to keep what's private, private.   I've written and deleted this entry too many times to count.   

But here I go again.  Maybe this time I'll keep it.

A few days before my birthday, I got my period.  This isn't a particularly remarkable thing; I've been getting my period since I was eight years old.  Thankfully, SlackMom realized I was developing at a breakneck pace and had the 'you will be bleeding profusely for seven days but I swear you won't die' speech.  She pressed a maxi-pad in my hand that I carried in my purse like a teenaged boy smuggling a perfectly square condom, and one day amongst the cracked and peeling paint of the girl's bathroom at Ben Franklin School, I started to bleed.  It didn't normalize right away, and for a good part of my youth I was bleeding ten to fourteen days in a row.  SlackMom made me hot cocoa laced with a little Bailey's to take the edge off, and I learned to dry swallow horse-sized pills of ibuprofen. 

As I got older, things started to normalize.  I went on the Pill and off of it, as it had a tendency to make me crazy and break out in an extra twenty pounds of fat.  In my 30's, I run as close to clockwork as possible: About three weeks between cycles that last five days.  Some light cramping, nothing that requires meds. 

Until a couple of weeks ago.

My friend Nomi was in town, and we had decided to do a little shopping along Melrose.  Except that I had to cut it short.  I was doubled over in pain, I was losing huge amounts of blood.  This is different, I told Will, I don't know what's going on, but this is different.  We went to my birthday party but I could feel my insides expanding and contracting.  It felt like someone was scraping my uterus with a grapefruit spoon.  Five days and it'll be over, I thought.

Except this time, it wasn't.

Finally, on the tenth day I realized that this probably wasn't me having my period.

I was having a miscarriage.

I was upfront with Will before we even started dating: I don't want kids.  I like kids, but I don't want them.  He said he felt the same way.   We've taken steps to prevent it.  We're careful - maybe not 100%, but really, incredibly, totally damn close.  And yet, not close enough.

I know that there are a lot of 35-year-old women out there who would probably be thrilled to know that they are fertile as ripe sewage.  Unfortunately, I am not one of them.  But I can't shake the feeling of being incredibly, inexplicably sad. I don't have a right to feel this way, I told him, but I do.

I believe in a woman's right to choose.  I used to do clinic defense when I was in college in Boston, and as we'd escort young girls and middle aged women through the lines of screaming protesters, I'd always wonder why the people screaming in our faces thought we were pro-abortion.  No one goes to a clinic singing Yay!  I get to have an abortion today! 

I told Will last night over dinner, I still don't want to have kids, but if this happened again, I don't think I could...my voice trailed off and he nodded.  Yeah, I know, he told me.

We're barely keeping our head above water financially - but we are.  However, there is no Universe in which we could afford to have a kid.  I'll have yet another conversation with my Chick Doctor asking her why can't I get my tubes tied, because it seems silly that my only options are to jack with my hormones (aka the Pill, the patch, etc.) or condoms, which clearly we have to use with laserlike precision. 

It's buttsex from here on out! Will told me.

He's kept me laughing just as much as I've been crying lately.  All I can say is marriage is hard work, but my husband makes it pretty damned easy.

Apropo of Nuthin'

Just a few tidbits that have been keeping me occupied as of late:

I recently saw a photo in a friend's flickrstream of his iPhone, charging with a solar charger on the dashboard of his Prius.  It made me want to dump a gallon of bleach in the nearest sewer.  I understand that our resources on this planet are finite, but the Greener-than-Thou Ironic-Nonirony will be the death of me.

...

I'm sure that at least fourteen of you have sent this to my husband already.  He likes robots, but he doesn't, erm, like robots.  I know this because I have actually dated more than one guy into ASFR.  Although it appears we're not all that far off from marrying robots.  And here I thought the whole point of the RealDoll (NSFW) was that she wouldn't be bugging you about getting hitched.

...

Thanks to my fabulous husband, I now have insurance.  I called to make my yearly girly doctor's appointment - for April, 2008.  If I want to actually have a yearly check-up, I have to start by building a time machine to go back and call before he and I even met.

...

Here's something I've been wondering for awhile: what makes you read someone's blog?  Is it because their experience is similar to yours?  Because it's different?  Because you're nosy?  Because you have a hatecrush?  Does the quality of the writing matter? Do you find yourself drawn back to reading blogs of people that you know will irritate you?  Please feel free to expound in the comments.

Porn-01K.

Yesterday afternoon, I had a break in a Big Case that I've been working on.  I shut my laptop and ran back to the Detective Agency HQ to let Mr. Boy in on my big news.  As I burst into the room, he quickly clicked his mouse, minimizing what was on the computer screen.  I knelt down next to him and started rattling off the details of my current mystery when I noticed that he was incredibly focused on me.  Focused in that don't-move-and-maybe-she-won't-notice.  I glanced at the title of the minimized window on the computer screen, where I caught the word SWALLOWS.

Are you downloading porn?

Mr. Boy - and pretty much anyone who knows me, for that matter - knows that I have zero problems with porn.  The main rule is No People You Know, meaning no ex-girlfriends, no other bloggers, no girls that you've slept with.  Of course, this rule was put to the test in a previous relationship, where my boyfriend at the time was friends with someone who was dating a porn star who was known for Putting Things In Her Butt.  She was lovely, if a little dull, and while I shook her hand and said nice-to-meet-you all I could think is I've seen you with a Lego in your butt and I hope you've washed your hands since then.  So minus using one's ass as extra storage space, it hasn't come up.

Mr. Boy turned red.  Uh, yeah.  But I wasn't looking at it!

Is that like you didn't inhale?

No, I mean I was downloading it for later.  It's future porn.  Y'know, like if you're at work or something.

My husband is one of those people who doesn't really worry about tomorrow.  We'll figure it out is the mantra he repeats when I worry about our financial future.  So it's good to know that he's stockpiling porn for a rainy day.  When the Apocalypse comes, I can be secure in the knowledge that the Detective Agency will be chock full of water, liquor, and porn. 

Just another sign that I married the right guy.

Thursday, Part Two.

The gym I work at is located in a shopping complex that includes a hotel.  This hotel only seems to cater to confused people and assholes.  Not a day goes by that someone comes into the gym and says is this the hotel? even though it says GYM and there are towels and sign in sheets and bottled water and sweaty people.  These people always have 384792342 pounds of luggage, and can't believe it when I tell them the gym is downstairs.  How was I supposed to know? they say, shaking their heads, and while I want to respond the sign as you drive in says HOTEL so that might be a clue but I just smile and say it's a common mistake and send them on their way.

The assholes are the people who ignore the sign at the beginning of our parking area that says GYM PARKING ONLY.  I am always polite to these people, telling them it's gym parking only, they probably just missed the sign.  I smile and play dumb-girl-tee-hee and while it's annoying, it gets them turned around and  out of there.  Tonight, as I was getting ready to leave I saw a frat-boy (unfairly stereotyped by me due to his backwards baseball cap, slightly too-shaggy do, jean shorts and sneakers and sweatshirt, his girlfriend/wife/companion for the evening clad in a micro mini, spandex top and knockoff UGGS.

They get out of the car.  I approach.

I'm so sorry, you can't park here, I tell them.  This is gym parking only.

I'm staying at the hotel.

I know, but that means you have to park where there's hotel parking.  This is for the gym.

This is bullshit! 

I'm sorry, I know it sucks, but i padlock the gate and you'll have no way of getting back out.

Listen, you stupid bitch, the guy downstairs said I could park anywhere.

I look at the girlfriend, who is staring intently at the ground.  Grrrl power, indeed.

Well, I'm sorry to say he was wrong. You'll have to move your car.

Listen you stupid fat bitch--  He started to puff up in that I-am-boy-let-me-physically-intimidate-you way. 

Actually, I'm not stupid, because I can read that the sign clearly states gym parking only.  If you're going to throw a tantrum or hit me or whatever, could you please do it soon so I can lock up and go home?

He blinks once.  Twice.  He gets back in the car, starts it, and begins to ease out of our parking lot.

BULLSHIT! he yells back at me.

I didn't have the heart to tell him that he was staying at a hotel smack dab in the middle of Boystown.   Somehow I don't think he'd like that.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to see if we've got any bourbon.

Flashback.

This morning in spin class the instructor, A., hauled out both Tiffany's I Think We're Alone Now and Madonna's Like a Prayer.  Imagine your goals, she reminded us.  See the in front of you! 

For some reason, all I could see was bad fashion and even worse perms.  In the 80s, Junior High was kind to no one.

Each year of middle school, which in our district was comprised of sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, we had a class-wide party to celebrate the end of the year.  Each party generally ended up being some sort of dance or "social," implying that boys and girls would actually mingle.  And some did, possessing that innate ability to figure out how and when to pair off.  The rest of us were left to damp armpits and smudged eyeliner and passing notes and giving each other pep talks in the bathroom that yes Matt is really shy but he wants you to ask him to dance he told Brandon but Brandon made me swear I wouldn't tell so you can't tell him I told you but you should ask him but like, don't say  you were told to ask him just be all casual I think he's by the punch.

I remember that eighth grade was formal dance, meaning the girls wore dresses from The Limited (if you had money) and Fashionation (if you didn't) and the boys donned khakis, button-down white shirts and knit maroon ties.  We all gathered in the darkened and decorated "pods" (a group of four rooms that could be cordoned off by huge accordion-sliding doors with a stage at the front) on a Friday night to shake our lily white butts to Madonna, Talking Heads, and Culture Club.  I wore a mustard colored tank dress with a matching jacket, patent leather pumps, and black beads.  If a picture still exist, I pray that they spontaneously combust. 

Seventh grade I actually faked a wrist injury to ditch a handbell concert in order to make that year's dance, making me the only person in the history of the school to get kicked out of handbells. 

I am the original punk rawk nerd.

But sixth grade, sixth grade was where the class moms really outdid themselves.

We had a "Michael Jackson Party."  The "Michael Jackson Party" was something different than it would be now, being sans Jesus Juice and Bubbles the Chimp, not to mention that I got to keep my pants on and there was no twenty million dollar settlement at the end of it all.   Mind you, this was 1983, Thriller had been released a few months previous and Michael Jackson was MICHAEL JACKSON SUPERSTAR as opposed to the Michael Jackson Freakshow with the Bad-Touch Grip.  There was a 'Learn the Zombie Dance from Thriller' (which I already knew from jazz class, because I was that cool) and 'Pin the Sequined Glove on the Michael' and a Moon Walk Contest and cupcakes that spelled out Billie Jean.  But the best was supposedly the Michael Jackson Impersonator, who was going to close out the party in a blaze of glory.

Except that he never showed up.

You see, he had gotten lost. So he pulled over and went inside a White Castle to ask for directions.  Where he was summarily mobbed by a crowd. 

Because they thought MICHAEL JACKSON WAS IN THEIR WHITE CASTLE.

I still wonder to this day:  what happened to that guy?

And feel free to share your Middle School Lameness in the comments!