Want To Get Ahead at Work? Keep Your Vagina Clean!

Um. Um. Hmmmm....Sometimes there really are no words.

Summer’s Eve, everyone's favorite brand of vaginal douche with the flowy white curtains and rainfalls and ponies, has an advertisement in the latest issue of Women’s Day, advising women on how they can get a raise. Along with eating a healthy breakfast and focusing on what I bring to the bottom line, I need to make sure that my vag is all shiny and clean and fresh.

But then:



Oh, of course. I would NEVER want to get too personal. I'll keep my vagina sparkling, and my boss can keep his balls clean, but we won't discuss it. With that stuff in order, really, the revenue and growth potential is endless.

Body Positivity and Fat and Disordered Eating, Oh My!

I've been having some post-vacation crazy head around my weight, so it's always good to check in with the blogosphere to put things in perspective, or at least find some commiseration.

I loved this post over at Saturday Jane, especially this:

The weird thing is that I don’t actually think I have an awful body. I can look at it objectively and go, “Oh, hey, I have a waist! That is a nice thing to have.” I can try to rate myself on the 10 scale (I don’t recommend this) and come up with a number that isn’t in the negatives. I am pretty dang standard, but as soon as I try to dress above my ‘attractiveness rating’ I get nervous.

I think this is because a woman’s confidence can be seen as an inherently dangerous thing. If a woman proudly posits that her ears were, in fact, carved by artisan Gods, people will give her The Look. You know The Look. The ‘Mm, do you really think you can afford to say things like that? Are your ears really that fantastic? In fact, I think one is bigger than the other. Hey, Barbara, look at this girl’s ears, don’t you think one is too big?” Rather than deal with the heartbreak of somebody tearing down her assumptions, the woman with the fabulous ears will keep her confidences to herself, becoming ashamed of her own pride in a weird cycle of non-esteemy esteem.

What it boils down to is this: I am okay with my body, but I don’t want other people to know that I am okay with my body, because then they will notice it, and what if they discover something that is not okay? And then if they think I am okay with something that really isn’t okay, they’ll think I’m a snob, or a bitch. They’ll think I’m one of those blindly self-praising girls who thinks she’s all that. They’ll tell everybody else that that’s what I am. A girl who thinks she is all that, when I am not all that at all, I’m not even a little bit that! And then everyone will talk about me behind my back and I’ll never get asked to prom and nobody will ever approve my housing loans.

I am not afraid of people thinking I am ugly.

I am afraid of people thinking that I am presumptuous.

This is why I am eager to beat The Universe to the punch, to explain that oh, no, don’t worry. I know my nose is weird and blobby and crooked. I get that my fingers are the size and shape of chewed-on cigars. It’s cool. I’m cool. I don’t think I’m ‘above my station’ or anything. I’m being realistic here.

I could have written that. I wish I wrote that. I am that.

In other news, please check out this article on Jezebel about the new reality show, What's Eating You -- an Intervention-like show about people with eating disorders. Or as I like to think of it, A How To Guide For Young ED Sufferers.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation: Reading And More Reading

Oh, how I used to love those essays in elementary school -- the perfect exercise for a dutiful, Type A student who wanted to show off all the academic exercises (reading) she performed during the summer.

We are back from Long Island. It was a lovely break, and we made it to the beach or my father's cousin's pool every single day of the 15 days we were there. YG and I even had a few nights away from the kids, including an overnight in NYC with Korean BBQ, yummy cupcakes and free sangria on the rooftop deck of our hotel.

YG biked almost every day, and I managed to squeeze together a few longer runs. The best part of vacation though, was all of that glorious uninterrupted reading time. I steamed through 6 books including:

* Judith Warner's Perfect Madness:Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety -- I know this is a few years old, but I couldn't put it down. Warner looks at current society's obsession with parenting, and how things came to be out of balance. She makes the argument that the value systems that have traditionally driven the market (a focus on extreme competition and winning at all costs, blah) have filtered into our private value systems. [Tangent: For interesting reading on the values-based marketplace, check out our friend Matt's blog.] There is no difference now between the values that drive enormous corporations and those that drive families, and because people feel out of control and unable to keep up with the Joneses, they focus on the things that they CAN control -- their kids. This leads to extreme helicopter parenting, anxiety, etc. It was a great read and I could certainly relate to that out-of-body experience most of the women interviewed had when they see
how quickly the constraints of traditional gender roles re-emerge once there are kids involved. I wish there had been more on how to work toward political and social reform other than her standard "call your congressman" line, but I can overlook that.

* Megan McCafferty's Sloppy Firsts -- I blame SKB and her Megan McCafferty obsession for this one. I thought this was going to be a YA book and wasn't really interested, but hello, sarcastic braniac teenager from NJ who keeps a diary of her horrendous high school experience? Loved it, and finished it in a day. It reminded me of a John Hughes movie with a little My So Called Life mixed in.

* John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime -- I wondered if this book would live up to the hype, and it totally did. It reads like a novel, and has bits of suspence even though you know the outcome. Most of the candidates appear very human, and I ended up appreciating Hillary a bit more and loving Michelle more (as if that were possible). The chapters on Palin are scary hilarious, in that you still don't understand what the hell is wrong with her, and John Edwards looks like King Douche. Loved it.

* Jennifer Eagan's A Visit From The Goon Squad. I heard this review on NPR a few weeks ago, and immediately went out and bought the book. It's a novel that reads like a short story collection, and the cast of characters is something out of Great Expectations. Loved the powerpoint chapter.

* Monica Ferrel's The Answer is Always Yes -- I don't know when I bought this, but it's been collecting dust for months. It's about an insecure kid from NJ trying to be cool at NYU in the early 90s and the NYC club scene of the same era. Let's just say it was relatable. And the prose is very breezy and whimsical.

* Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies. I can't believe I never read this before. Lovely. And I enjoyed all the references to my neighborhood.

I'm currently in the middle of Joyce Carol Oates' Black Girl White Girl. It's dragging a bit and definitely not her best work, but I'll refrain from offering an opinion until I finish it.

We also read stacks of crappy magazines. Real ones, not ones like those of the Famous 'YG and The Crappy Magazines' Incident 2009, when we sent YG on the errand to pick up crappy beach mags and he came back with Popular Mechanics and Car&Driver. I now know way too much about the Kardashians, Lady Gaga's bad boyfriend, and Jennifer Aniston's baby plans. Sigh. I guess the reading cancels this out, right?

Linkeroo

We're just back from vacation, so I'm working on a few updates. In the meantime, check these out:

Medicinal Marzipan on The Hierarchy of Fatness

Newsweek's Special Feature on The Beauty Advantage

Red Vinyl Shoes on day jobs, particularly apt as I went back to work today.

Nothing We Women Can't Be

Cooler part of having a kid? Getting to watch Sesame again. LOVE this.

Shirley, You Jest?

I am now officially off the clock until August 19. Destination: Shirley.

When I come back and write my What I Did on My Summer Vacation essay, I hope to have:
* Read
* Beach
* Slept past 6:30
* Wine
* Carvel Ice Cream
* Run
* Wine
* Beach
* Hung out with YG at the new Kimpton in NYC while parents watched the spawn
* Hung out with my brother and sister
* Been appreciative of my mom (read: not be a dick)
* Not gained 30 lbs
* Wine

So.Many.Chores

I mentioned last week that I had much to say about another one of New York Magazine's bougie 'parenting makes me sad because I have to spend so much money on hand-crafted wooden toys and organic foods' articles. I was all prepared to offer a scathing critique (or let's be honest: link to someone else's scathing critique and say I agreed with it), but there were pieces of All Joy and No Fun -- Why Parents Hate Parenting that definitely resonated.

Insert standard parenting disclaimer here about how I absolutely adore my child and my stepchild, and I've never been so sure about any other decision in my life blah, blah.

But oh my god, the to-do list! My daughter is only a year old, so right now, I can't talk about how being a parent is going to impact my long-term career or my relationship. I know that these are topics that people stress over, but right now, work is well, working for me (in the balance sense, not the right fit way), and I have faith that YG and I will be able to remember each other in the midst of all the chaos. It is the day-to-day activities, though, that make me a little insane, and make me question the idea of adding more people to the mix. In six pages of the article, the one quote that jumped out at me like a big bold exclamation point was:

“I have two really great kids”—ages 9 and 11—“and I enjoy doing a lot of things with them,” she told me. “It’s the drudgery that’s so hard: Crap, you don’t have any pants that fit? There are just So. Many. Chores.”

YG is traveling right now, and that tends to make me feel like I am deeply mired in the drudgery and all bitchy and moody, but here's what the last 48 hours have looked like here:

Sunday
* Up at 6:30
* Coffee/breakfast for me, breakfast for Z
* Play on floor with Z because she screams bloody murder when I stand up, never mind leave the room
* Dress Z. Avoid showering because it means baby meltdown and I don't smell that bad, and even if I do, church is filled with hippies.
* Church
* Z naps for 2 hours. During this time, I make both of our lunches for Monday, clean the breakfast dishes, fold some laundry, pay bills, clean the litter box
* Take Z to pool
* Target stop -- cat litter, bread, milk
* Give Z bath. Let her run around naked because she has raging diaper rash.
* Z shits on the floor.
* Clean shit floor.
* Make bottle. Read story. Z in bed by 7:45.
* Take out garbage and recycling, balance checkbook, eat dinner.
* Take shower because I know tomorrow morning is not going to be easy.
* At 10:30, decide I want to read my book (Judith Warner's Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety), but am too exhausted. Watch Real Housewives of New Jersey instead.

Monday
* Get up at 6:15 to beat Z and get myself cup of coffee
* Z morning bottle. Bottle leaks all over our bed.
* Get dressed, get Z dressed. Nearly break leg trying to put on underwear, due to squirmy crying thing attempting to scale my leg
* Get stuck behind recycling truck on our one-way street on the way to bring Z to daycare
* Daycare drop off. Z is smiley and blowing kisses and ma-ma-mama-ing, so I play on the floor for too long.
* Of course, there is traffic on 95.
* Work day.
* Leave by 5 to beat traffic to daycare.
* Take Z home, put her in the Ergo, and do errands (mail, depositing checks, blah blah)
* Introduce Z to the wonder of the Chipotle burrito bowl, and have brief worry over whether or not this is baby-appropriate food. Say 'fuck it.' She enjoys.
* Z home. Z pre-bedtime meltdown.
* Read Z her story. Doorbell rings -- it's our neighbors wanting to know if they can use our grill. I really like them so I chitchat for a bit, while Z whines.
* Cat gets out.
* Cat chase. Crying baby.
* Bedtime routine part 2.
* Make lunches, clean living room, think about changing the milk-stained sheet from this morning.
* Think it's time for a High Life instead.
* Blog.
* TBD: shower, maybe some reading, more likely another episode of Real Housewives

And folks, I had a GREAT weekend and a pretty good day today. Despite her meltdowns, Zygote is pretty fun to be around. It wasn't bad. It just is what it is, but when you think that every day is going to be this race of activities and chores, it can feel a bit overwhelming.

Sarah Wildman wrote in her essay on Politics Daily,
Parenting and Happiness Pair Well, Despite What You Read:

"Parenting all joy and no happiness? Not at all. It's all happiness and joy, but also all frustration and anxiety and, yes, anger. It's schizophrenia, it's mania."

and

"Having a kid is a little like being an expat in the world -- the highs are that much higher, the lows that much lower, the intensity like nothing else. Joy and pain; tears and laughter; everything that much sharper than it was before."

This is how I prefer to see it. The drudgery is much more intense than before, but the happiness factor is way higher too. I look at this kid, and she's pretty cool, and I think, "hey, I helped make that. Neat."

And I'll leave you with this quote from the New York article about parents in other countries being, on average, happier than American parents:

If you are no longer fretting about spending too little time with your children after they’re born (because you have a year of paid maternity leave), if you’re no longer anxious about finding affordable child care once you go back to work (because the state subsidizes it), if you’re no longer wondering how to pay for your children’s education and health care (because they’re free)—well, it stands to reason that your own mental health would improve. . . .“We’ve put all this energy into being perfect parents,” says Judith Warner, author of Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, “instead of political change that would make family life better.”

And maybe, because that is Something I Do Give A Shit About, it's time to get involved in forcing that political change. What that means, I don't really know.

There is a Balm in Gilead (Or: Reading)

I finished reading Marilynne Robinson's book, Gilead, and I suspect that this is another book that people will love or hate. I suspect that "well, it's the musings of a Congregationalist minister in 1950s Iowa" would not be a huge sell for most of my friends. But I loved it. It's the story of an old (76) minister who writes a letter to his young, seven-year-old son, hoping to impart some wisdom on the boy because he won't be around as he grows up. It would be easy to simplify and say that this is a book about "life lessons," but I don't want to do that. It's about life, death, forgiveness, love, grief, etc. It's about how even a simple, small town life can be a beautiful life.

Robinson's writing is amazing. I remember reading her book, Housekeeping, while we were away on vacation in Cancun. I kept thinking that it was the worst beach read ever. Not because it was a bad book, but because the prose was so packed and beautiful, it took me forever to even get through a page. She waited more than 20 years to publish her next book, and the words read like she was working them over for a long time, choosing them to be perfect.

I also love that this book keeps to the form of the letter from cover to cover. I've always been a writer/journaler/whatever, but post-Zygote, I've been even more enthralled with? committed to? this idea that she should have a written record of what kind of person I was. We really only know our parents as our parents, and not really as people. As Robinson writes,

"You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutal incomprehension."

I am Zygote's mother, and this is how she will always see me. My parents have always been my parents, and even with glimpses here and there into their lives pre-children, I have no other real frame of reference for them. Everything they do -- every triumph and every horrible mistake -- is seen through the lens of me, me, me. This is the way of the world, and I don't mind being Just Mommy, but I do like the idea of leaving behind some record of what else was swirling around in my crazy head, and some context.

I write Zygote a letter in a journal we made for her every month. I had hoped to do more, but that never came to fruition. Neither did the Baby Book that you're "supposed to" keep, recording first teeth and laughs and smiles. File under: numerous parenting failures. YG is much more visual and fills the journal sometimes with cards and ticket stubs of places we've visited and pictures. He does the same for MG.

I've often wondered if my parents have done anything similar for me. When my grandfather died, we discovered that he and my grandmother had kept all the love letters they exchanged during World War II. Even though my grandmother was still alive, she had Alzheimer's and my father and aunt said they felt uncomfortable reading them, that it would be an invasion of her privacy. I wonder if they ever did get to reading them. I wonder whatever happened to all the letters and postcards I sent my family when I was traveling. I can't imagine that they threw them away (my tendency to hoard all my old letters and cards has to come from somewhere), but where are they? In some cardboard box in a closet, waiting to be rediscovered? My mother surprised me, the first time I got married, by giving me a scrapbook that she made, pasting old photos of me, awards and terribly bad, dark poems I had written into it. My aunt also wrote me a letter that was stuffed in there. My mom and my aunt are not, by any stretch of the imagination, crafters or scrap bookers, and knowing that she had saved that stuff was a better present than any of the other crap I got.

I'm a bit rambly, and there were many other plot points that I enjoyed, but this paragraph, stuffed right in the middle of the book where you almost could miss it, sums up why I loved it so much:

"I'm writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you've done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God's grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you."

That made me think of this quote, that both my father and grandfather, carry/carried around:

"A hundred years from now, it will not matter what kind of car I drove, what kind of house I lived in, how much money I had in the bank...but the world may be a better place because I made a difference in the life of a child." -- Forest Witchcraft

Read this book.

There is a balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole;
There is a balm in Gilead
To heal the sin-sick soul.

Six Items or Less: Yes. No. Maybe?

The New York Times ran an article today, Shoppers on a ‘Diet’ Tame the Urge to Buy, that spoke right to me.

I've been thinking a lot about 'Fast Fashion' and I've also been thinking a lot about money. Or more specifically, how I don't have much. And what I have doesn't seem to get prioritized for the things I want (travel, stability, wine), but ends up being frittered away on more t-shirts and stacks of books I will never have the time to read or on keeping 6pm.com in business. As much as I'd like to go cold turkey and declare A Year Without Shopping (good book, BTW), that's just not going to work for me. I need to think of things as a fun project with goals and objectives (see also: Type A) for it to work.

I toyed with the idea of joining Kendi's 30 for 30 Challenge, but the Six Items Or Less folks are hardcore! I'm intrigued, awed, and possibly interested. I'm still mulling it over, and in case it wasn't obvious, will be blogging about whatever project I decide on. I don't make decisions without first examining exactly how I can document them. :-)

In the meantime, check out the video:

Close To My Own Heart

Check out The Globe's article, Years and Marriages Later, They Still Pay.
Biting tongue. Biting tongue.

Cory Doctorow and Me and Sometimes Stephen King

Have you discovered I Write Like? It's a statistical analysis tool that analyzes word choice and writing style and compares it with those of the famous writers. I input a bunch of blog entries, and Stephen King came up once, but Cory Doctorow came up multiple times. I'm embarrassed to say that I needed to look him up. Well, add to the list of "things to read."

I write like
Cory Doctorow

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Fast Fashion (Or Other Unsustainable Things I Wish I Didn't Enjoy)

It's come to this. I'm going to have to give up my shopping habit. When you compare it to eating fast food, it seems inevitable.

What the hell am I talking about, you ask?

Naomi Wolf wrote an article, The High Cost of Cheap Fashion, about a month ago, about why exactly those clothes at Zara, Forever 21, H&M and the like are so cheap. Later, Aminatou Sow, posted two items over at Feministe, Retail: It's Complicated and More on Fast Fashion. Both are making their way around the blogosphere, and are worthwhile reads.

These bits were what jumped out at me:

"Fast Fashion — much like Fast Food — is cheap, addictive, and built on an unsustainable, low-wage system. These throwaway clothes are purposefully designed to be worn a few times and discarded, which contributes the growing problem of textile waste. According to the EPA Office of Solid Waste, the average American household throws away more than 68 pounds of clothing and textiles per person per year so it’s not hard to imagine how the constant production of new clothing poses a number of environmental challenges, especially in developing countries. "

And,

"Truly committing to Slow Fashion would require us to learn more about the clothes we buy and who produced them, and using that knowledge to make socially and environmentally responsible choices. "

Sigh.

We all know I have a problem. The No Shopping Project demonstrated this to me in a way that I knew deep down, but never fully realized. I'm having the same feelings that I did when I knew I had to give up eating so much processed, crap food. I know what the "right" thing to do is, but I don't want to give up what I like, and I am definitely the product of a culture that embraces stuff, and a culture that wants that stuff cheap and fast.

I suspect I'll be spending some time with Elizabeth Kubler Ross in the near future.

Don't Let The Door Hit You In The Vagina On Your Way Out

We are off for Maine Weekend Part Deux, so posting will be light. I have things to say (New York Mag runs another unhappy parenting article! Must Comment!) but need to pack.

The title is apropos of nothing. Just on my mind after reading my brother's post about how he often quotes from Dumb and Dumber and Knocked Up, which I do too. All that money they spent on those college educations...

Somewhere in Heaven, Billy Martin Just Got Fired

RIP, George. It's a sad day for Yankees fans.

Back Down The Rabit Hole: Or Finding The Right Thing To Read Exactly When You Need It

I have a couple of free minutes to write this evening, and I was searching through my Yahoo account, looking for articles I sent myself that I eventually was going to write about. Key word is eventually. I wanted to link to Medicinal Marzipan because it's one of my new favorites, and on there, I found this link to Imagine Today's post, Falling Back Down The Rabbit Hole.

"See, for all of my talk about body-acceptance and loving yourself there’s still this whisper of self doubt, a voice that is always waiting to let me know just how much better I would look and feel if I just dropped say, ten pounds? Fifteen? maybe even twenty?! It’s a voice that I work incredibly hard to silence with projects, outings, new dresses, and accomplishments. Most of the time I’m stronger than it but if I do something like, say, get on the scale and discover that I now weigh five pounds more than I thought I did… that’s when the voice in my head takes over."

And,

"If that wasn’t bad enough it was all to easy to find computer programs (like Daily Plate) that were ready to recommend a calorie intake of about 1,100 and forms where I could talk incessantly about this diet with other people because our society is structured to encourage diet talk more than nutrition talk. I mean, yeah, we cue in to eating disorders most of the time but you can’t even get diagnosed with an eating disorder until your body weight drops to a dangerous level. This is creepy because it means, essentially, that I can have all of the behaviors of anorexia (I don’t, but hypothetically) without the medical institution even acknowledging something is wrong with me until I drop enough weight to concern people… this makes sense considering American culture focuses on weight as the bottom line, rather than behavior/nutrition/health/etc.

Essentially, our culture tends to encourage people to develop disordered eating behaviors (which I certainly have and I’m not the only one) by focusing so firmly on diet pills, instant-gratification plans, before & afters etc. instead of focusing on NUTRITION.

I won’t let this beat me down."

I needed to read that. This body of mine and I are not in a good place right now. I don't know who declared an end to the cease fire first, but there has been a huge disconnect between how I see myself and what others see, and more importantly, between how I see my body and what my body can actually do. I ran a half marathon, I am regularly putting together 7-8 mile runs, I had a baby, I nursed a baby for a year, and I lost all the baby weight. Still, there's a voice in my head that says "not enough" and the mirror and the pictures just show fat, fat, fat. We went outlet shopping over the weekend, and I cried in the dressing room for the first time in a really LONG time over some ill-fitting pants (always with the fucking tiny pants!) And then I cried more because I am in my mid-thirties, a mom, and relatively smart, and still, this is such an issue for me.

I'm trying to figure out a way to match seeing what my body can do to how I see my body, but it's a work in progress. Just typing it is extremely difficult for me, but probably the only one to get this recovery and acceptance ball o' fun kicking around again.

Reading/A Book Review: Marion Nestle's What To Eat

I think and write a lot about food. And then I think and write a lot about the issues that I think are associated with food -- body politics, health, fat, fitness, intuitive eating, etc. I'm no expert, but I think and write and read a lot about this stuff because I find it interesting and because I want answers. I really have no fucking clue how to eat.

The abridged version: dieted for years, bad, bad, BAD disordered eating behaviors, stopped dieting, started researching/reading, started running and understanding food as fuel. Still completely and hopelessly confused. And totally insecure in my abilities to make decent food choices.

A friend recommended Marion Nestle's book, What To Eat: An Aisle-by-Aisle Guide to Savvy Food Choices and Good Eating. I absolutely loved this book and would put it on my "must read" list. It covers the same issues as a lot of Michael Pollan's books, but is much more accessible and well, funny.

The book is organized by grocery section, and Nestle tackles all of the issues -- taste, nutrition, health, social, environmental, and cost -- associated with each. After tackling these issues and in some cases, looking at the politics behind them, she talks about how how she, herself, eats and tackles her own food choices. I loved this. I felt it was informative and really not preachy.

Overall, I didn't learn a lot about what I should be doing more of (eating more fruits and vegetables, less processed foods), but I did learn about all the food myths and misinformation out there, and I learned a TON about how to properly read food labels. I thought I was relatively good at this, but I was sorely mistaken. There are so many sugars that I didn't really know were sugars. I also got a better understanding of why it is such bullshit to place the burden of safety and health on the consumer rather than the producers.

And don't even get me started on the chapters on marketing food to children. I've recoiled in horror in recent years when I started noticing products like "Diet Pepsi with Vitamins" or "Iron-Fortified Cookie Crisp," but that's mainly because I like my processed foods exactly that way -- processed, HFCS-ed up, and completely devoid of nutritional value. But that was before I became a parent. I nursed Zygote until she was almost a year old, so I didn't have to think too much about what I was feeding her. When I started feeding her solids, I found that I was grabbing snacks that were labeled "start healthy" or "made with whole grains" because they sounded nutritious, but I wasn't really reading the labels. With the exceptions of a few jarred foods, only a handful of toddler snacks contain ingredients that children should actually be eating. Just an example, I have something called a "lil' crunchies baked whole grain corn snack" in front of me, and the ingredient list is: whole grain yellow corn meal, corn oil, whey, tomato powder, ticalcium phosphate, sugar, salt, onion powder, garlic powder, citric acid, spices (basil, black pepper, fennel), mixed tocopherols (for freshness), natural spice flavor, alpha tocopheryl acetate (vitamin E), zinc oxide, elctrolytic iron. What the hell is all that? Just because it sounds healthy and it's marketed as such doesn't mean it actually is.

Nestle comes out in favor of organics, mainly because you can get food that is certified and regulated. I get that argument and respect it, but personally, I find it hard to choose organic strawberries from thousands of miles away, when I get can get local, conventionally grown strawberries from the Farmers' Market down the street, where they will be fresher and didn't use a ton of fuel to get here. My choice, but I feel like it's an informed one.

I'm hoping that this book will have more of an impact on our day to day cooking and shopping, and will help me put some of the beliefs that I have about grocery shopping and eating into real practice.

Delicious Spam I Have Enjoyed

In response to my relationship post, I received this comment, "Thank you so much for sharing it.Kamagra is one of the most popular Erectile Dysfunction medications. Kamagra affects the muscles lining the blood vessels in the penis causing more blood to stay in the penis when sexually stimulated. This helps men to maintain an erection."

Beautiful.

In Support of NOPWAD, a Fabulous New National Organization!

I wish I could claim responsibility for coining the term NOPWAD, the National Organization for People Who Advocate the Divorce (of their Mutual Friends Who Obviously Hate Each Other But Stay Together For Religious / Social Reasons), but sadly I am not that funny. I saw it in the comments section of an article about NOM's (National Organization for Marriage) Creepy Summer bus tour, and laughed my ass off.

From NOM's blog site:

"We have a right to vote for marriage. And we are going to fight for our rights—and, most importantly, for our children’s right to grow up in a country where God’s truth about marriage trumps political correctness and judicial tyranny! We’re here, we support marriage, we’re not going anywhere!. . . This is a chance to meet others who share our deepest values; to identify, energize and equip fellow activists; and to send a powerful message to elites who pretend that Americans don’t care about this issue. If they can isolate us, they can intimidate us. But the people united cannot be defeated!"

Sigh. What to say, really? "Supporting" marriage means being anti-gay? Gay marriages are somehow different than heterosexual marriages? If you're for strengthening marriages, why not let people who made the choice to get married stay married? I have a really hard time understanding exactly what NOM's premise is.

This Is What A Relationship Looks Like: Sex With Others Edition

Do other couples do this? YG and I were lying around, discussing what other actors and actresses we thought were hot and who we would have sex with if they were right there, you know, in our bed, kind of like the Friends laminated list.

Our lists are pretty pathetic, and it took a lot of conversation and google searching to figure them out. YG's were Carrie Byron (the girl from Mythbusters), Scarlett Johanssen and Jennifer Aniston. With prompting from me, he also decided on Christina Hendricks, but only when I reminded him that she was the hot redhead on Mad Men. For me, he asked me to choose between Brad Pitt and George Clooney, and I said that Clooney wins that one every time, although Brad Pitt got infinitely hotter than his boring blonde midwestern thing when he took up with Angelina Jolie, who is also on my list. Then he asked, "Clooney or Leo?" And really, is that even a question? LEO. Who's hotter than Leo, and we all know that my answer would be Jon Stewart because he is the hell of funny and that always trumps hot. And Denis Leary, just because.

And then, the following conversation ensued:
JM: This is a pretty paltry list. I mean, we're Google image searching "hot people."
YG: Yeah, and I don't even know who half these hot people actually are.
JM: Ditto.
YG: Problem is that even if I wanted to have sex with any of my people, I would want you there too.
JM: That's sweet. I don't even really think about having sex with my people.
YG: What do you think about?
JM: I mean, I don't know. I'd want them to think that I was all hilarious and smart and then notice my giant boobs. I got issues, man. Like, if Leonardo DiCaprio was here, right now, naked, in bed, I'd probably be telling him stupid jokes. Like, even in my fantasies, I'm not hot. But I am really, really funny.
YG: Even in your fantasies, you're fat.
JM: Now see, THAT's funny.
YG: Exactly.
JM: I think I need to blog this now because it's kind of funny and I won't remember it tomorrow.
YG (recapping entire conversation with editorial notes): Go write!

Sabotage or Stupidity: You Decide -- Or How I Didn't Meet Mary Karr

Mary Karr did a reading at Harvard Bookstore Monday night. How did I know this? Well, it's been on my calendar for about a month and a half now, and I had sketched out an elaborate fantasy in my head about how I was going to go there and get over my fear of "networking" and I'd talk to her and she would think I was witty and funny, and we'd chat about Syracuse and our dealings with AA and wasting time in marketing jobs and whatever, and I'd casually mention that I was a writer, and she'd be all, "oh, you're funny. I'd love to read your stuff," and so on. I rescheduled a bunch of weekend plans so that I could go to this reading, and YG agreed to babysit. And then....

I fucking FORGOT to go. I just forgot! I didn't even think about it until I got in to work yesterday morning, and I saw, "Mary Karr: Harvard Bookstore! YAY!" in big red ink on my desk calendar.

I'm sure a therapist could have a field day with this and all the self-sabotage angles, but for now, I'm going to take the higher road (eye roll) and chalk it up to stupidity. Maybe you don't like Mary Karr. She has her fair share of critics, but I have devoured everything she's ever written, most recently, Lit, and I was really looking forward to it. Damn it.

Well, at least I saw Rushdie that one time. This one time, at band camp. . .