Work-appropriate?

Every once in awhile, I wonder what in the sam hill I am doing looking at fashion-y websites. Me, who is (am?) sitting here in my kitchen, eating a scrambled-egg-with-mega-Sriracha-and-cheese on tortilla, drinkin a Safeway seltzer, wearing my Vandelay Industries t-shirt, no makeup (I ... think I own some that is still good? somewhere?) with my hair up in a clip (still sweaty from the gym -- I showered but didn't wash my hair, the better to maintain the expensive dye job). It amuses me, this habit of mine, useless and strange though it certainly be ...

Theme weeks are BULLSHIT and I'm not going to do them anymore: A treatise on why not.

So my kid's school has this thing called Red Ribbon Week, which is something or other about not doing crack because it's a ghetto drug, although they just tell the first graders a whole bunch of vague shit about "making healthy choices." Which, fine, whatever.

The problem -- the fucking PROBLEM -- is that they send home, on Friday, this list of all the shit for the themed days for the week beginning the very next Monday. It's a full weekend, and ain't nobody got time for that. So I kiiiiind of ignore it, a little bit, figuring we'll find something that'll do. But then on Sunday night, there is PANIC AND SCREAMING from the first-grader about Monday's Theme: Wear Red.

Kid Gleemonex does not wear red. She doesn't have one stitch, one thread, one ruffle of red clothing. She wears blue and only blue. Always. It is her thing. I remind her of that, and that this is why she has no red: She won't fucking wear it, so I don't fucking buy it anymore. But she won't just wear her school uniform, either, which is the only non-red option allowed. Tears, weeping, a keening ambulance-like wail of distress, heavy yelling (from me), etc. The next morning, the WORLD IS STILL AFLAME WITH PAIN at the goddamned red thing. So she ties her hair with red curling ribbon, makes a braided belt of same which she ties over her uniform, and the screaming stops.

Tuesday: Yellow and black, because "I BEE-lieve in the best Me I can BEE!" Mindful of Sunday night/Monday morning's emotional hellscape, I spend two fucking hours at the mall -- the MALL, with a two-year-old in tow -- dragging every single awful shitty tweener store for something that will do. Christ, there are a lot of those stores -- Justice, H&M Kids, Crazy 8, Old Navy, etc., plus of course Target. I pick up something at Old Navy that is yellow and gray.

Monday evening: Screaming, thrashing, recriminations: "It's got graaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay in it! You don't understand! It's supposed to be blaaaaaack! I HATE YELLOW!" etc. to infinity. Next morning, more of the same. She finally puts on the black velvet dress that is actually the base of her Halloween costume, pulls the uniform skirt over the dress's skirt, calls it good.

Tuesday morning: Back to goddamned Target to try again to find an item for Wednesday's theme: Team/Sports jerseys or T-shirts: "Let's TEAM UP to Get Active & Healthy!" Fascist conformist bullshit aside, Kid Gleemonex -- predictably -- has no such item. They're not BLUE. I find a Giants jersey (you know, they're in the World Series right now -- but this is the only Giants shirt in the entire South Bay, as far as I can tell).

Tuesday evening: WHY DO YOU ALWAYS BUY ME CLOTHES THAT ARE TOO BIG? THIS IS UGLY! (this goes on for a fucking hour).

Wednesday morning: [repeat] [repeat] [crying] Feeling emotionally abused, I finally just snarl "Wear it or don't, but get in the goddamn car." She did, but bitched at me for literally the entire ride and walk and standing waiting for the pledge of allegiance; various accusations were hurled, including but not limited to: me being mean, not understanding things, doing it wrong, could have made our own, she could have worn her soccer shirt, it's my fault she buttoned her cardigan wrong.

The moral of this story is twofold: 1) I begin to see that my kid is just a little bit tightly wound, and 2) Fuck "CRAZY HAIR/HAT AND/OR SILLY SOCKS" day tomorrow, right in the crazy nads.

That, and: Don't work the perfume counter at Horne's department store if you don't want to end up pimped out at One-Eyed Jack's.

Two of the Many Things Teenage Me Actually Learned from Twin Peaks

1) Older people -- like, way over 22 -- could and did have sex. Even with each other. I realize this makes me sound like an idiot, but I was a very sheltered kid with typical unexamined childish ideas about sexuality, such as that, for example, one's parents had had sex exactly the same number of times as the number of children they produced together, and no longer had sexual thoughts, much less acted on them. But here were Ben Horne and Catherine Martell, gettin' it on all afternoon; here were Norma Jennings and Ed Hurley, unable to keep their hands off of each other; here were Donna's parents clearly still sexual even through they were old and the mom was in a wheelchair (that actress, btw? is Zooey Deschanel's mom). MIND BLOWN. Worlds expanding.

2) Even pretty people can be in abusive relationships. Again: Idiot. But I was accustomed, by some cultural osmosis or other, to domestic violence being seen as sort of a trailer-park thing that happened to the ugly and generally unfortunate. Twin Peaks went right for it, though -- Donna's BF at the beginning of the show (lovely young Donna, whose family life is as warm and supportive and loving as TV families ever get) is a major dick who orders her around and even lays hands on her (though he doesn't hit her), and then of course you see Shelly Johnson's incredibly awful marriage and home life -- they never go into it exactly how she hooked up with Leo, but she's this breathtakingly beautiful, capable girl who no doubt married a guy she thought was good-looking and had money, and then some months or years later, you end up cowering in his unfinished house while he prepares to beat the shit out of you with a piece of soap stuffed into the toe of a tube sock.

ono i drobbed it my gum

yoo guys i cannt stoplauvhing


dissis my favrit

When we meet again, it won't be me.

I went super-deep down a rabbit hole the other day, putting together a perfect Halloween costume -- I wasn't really planning on dressing up because although it is fun and cool to dress up, the last few Halloweens have been on weekdays and I have young kids and all we do is make a circuit of the cousins' apartment complex, which hardly feels like worth going to any trouble for, but this year we're staying local and going to do our rounds in a neighborhood that I am assured has an AWESOME Halloween scene, so when Kid Gleemonex asked what me and Daddy are going to dress up as, I suffered a spasm of long-buried need to Do Halloween. SO.

Anyway. I wanted to be this, and it is this that I spent the day working on (trolling every website from Zappos to Lands' End, with large amounts of time on eBay, etsy, and LL Bean):

And but then I was double-checking the shoes, and watched the whole scene:

And realized that age wise, I'm much more properly suited to this (although not, in both cases, nearly so striking-looking):

And now I'm wondering if it would in fact verge on the grotesque to try to do my original idea, and anyway if Mr. Gleemonex won't do this (which he hasn't said yes or no yet):

Then what exactly is my deal? New idea ... new idea. Hm.

Little in the middle but she pack much back

This post has nothing to do with the title -- "Baby Got Back" just happened to come on the car radio today, and my kids think "I like big butts and I cannot lie" is the funniest fucking thing in the history of the world. 

Bumper Stickers and/or Car Decals That Bum Me Out: A Selection of Recent Sightings

MITT

NRA Member Since 2012

Got Twins +1?

My Pugs Are Smarter Than Your Honor Student!

[Calvin, down on his knees, praying before a large cross]

JAGERMEISTER

Nader 2000

[license plate] 4WRKGOT

Also I almost never pass a day without at least one Mitch Hedberg assay flickering across the old brain pan.

Two Unrelated Things

1) It is a rare day that I do not think to myself, "Settle down, Beavis!" Some days I say it out loud, but about 93 percent of the time it stays in my head.

2) When *I* go to BevMo, I come back with the thing or things which I intended to buy there (e.g. a handle of Stolichnaya, an xmas-gift-level bottle of sipping tequila, a sixer of wine for a party, what have you). But when *Mr. Gleemonex* goes there to pick up some Glenlivet, which for some reason has turned both rare and expensive around here (?huh?), he comes back with three bottles of Glenlivet, a twelver of Spaten, a bottle of sake (Wandering Poet label -- which of course, dear Twelve, made me think of the Troubador -- wonder how many times he's been nut-punched over these many years?), some Knob Creek, and a plastic "travel flask." He ... already has a very nice leather-bound flask. So ... I don't know. I like all this stuff, but -- for why is it here?