Home Alone

...and this is why I now work from home two days a week...

Learn Your Lessons Well

A Short Play:

Cast: Me, 11-year-old daughter

Scene: Leaving a community theater production of 'Godspell' - a favorite musical that I was excited to experience with my daughter

Me: (to kiddo, wondering if she understood any of the religious themes and/or enjoyed the play): "Well? What did you think?"

Kid: "I loved it. What's adultery?"

-fin-

Pulling No Punches

In honor of the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight last night, my friend and I tried a boxing workout for the first time yesterday morning. (Incidentally, I watched the weigh-in for this much-hyped match up with my husband. It was amusing to see McGregor get all up in Mayweather's grill and talk trash - particularly since he was wearing only underpants and appeared to be sporting a somewhat sizable erection. I leaned toward my husband and casually remarked, "He seems pretty excited about this boxing match.")

See? Also, a favor: if I pass away unexpectedly, can someone
please explain to my husband why there is a .gif file named "Erection"
on the computer desktop? (it's for my ART, for chrissakes)

The friend who suggested the boxing workout is one of my friends to whom many random and hilarious things happen...so when she asked if I wanted to try this class with her, I figured at worst, it would be a great workout and at best, we would get hit on by swingers, have someone expose themselves to us on the highway, be awakened by a drunk driver careening through the yard of a mountain cabin, or appear in court for a lawsuit brought against a wedding dress shop on the same date and time as Lorena Bobbitt's hearing.

NOTE: All of this has happened to her.

Getting ready to not be able to pick up water bottles.

As if following the script, our workout got off to a rather inauspicious start when we showed up at the gym, the gentleman checking us in asked for our IDs, and I handed him my Cigna insurance card in error.

The first class at this gym is complimentary (they tell you how great you look the entire duration). Just kidding -- I mean it's free, except for the $10 hand wraps you have to purchase. Somehow, we ended up in a 75 minute class, even though most of the classes offered at this gym are 60. After the guy checking us in wrapped our hands, we began the class - and ended any ability to move sweaty bangs out of our faces, drink from our water bottles, or have any sort of manual dexterity.

This only worsened when they added the boxing gloves to the mix. Not that we had time to drink water. After a rigorous 15 minute cardio warm up and some skills sessions, we did TEN three-minute rounds of boxing the bags using different punches, then 15 minutes of the most killer ab workout we've ever done. (The math here does not add up -- there were 15 additional minutes spent between rounds making sure our heart rates never went lower than say, an Olympic sprinter on meth, so during our "down" time between rounds, we were lunging or doing burpees.)

Right after a jab, hook, uppercut combo.

Really, really tough workout. And also somehow really fun. We liked it.

...I mean, we didn't "McGregor LIKE it", but we did like it.

Supremely Confusing

A nationally-known white supremacist lives about a mile from my house.

This is surprising to me because we live in northern Virginia – the small part of Virginia that is densely populated (and reasonable) enough for Virginia to vote blue. It just doesn’t seem like a place where a white supremacist might feel welcome or want to settle, especially considering places like…I don’t know…THE REST OF VIRGINIA exist.

For the record, said supremacist lives in a much swankier section of our area than I do – apparently spewing hatred is rather lucrative.

I was sharing the knowledge of this person living nearby with a neighbor friend, who blurted out, “I know! And before I knew who he was, my daughter went to his daughter’s birthday party at their house.”

This neighbor happens to be Jewish with a traditionally Jewish last name, and her daughter was adopted from Central America. And while admittedly I am not completely familiar with the levels of hatred in the white supremacy lifestyle, I am rather surprised that a Central American Jew scored a birthday invite.

Maybe it’s like those vegetarians who still eat fish?

I Yam What I Yam

If I could say something to my 20-year-old self, it would be this: enjoy not being gross.

(I'd probably also tell her to buy stock in Apple, Uber, and anything else Warren Buffett and Ashton Kutcher deem good investments. Then I'd probably have to assure her that yes, that Ashton Kutcher...seriously..."Kelso"...)

But I digress.

I'm actually in better shape than I was when I was younger, but only because I've had to stop ingesting anything that gives me pleasure. The growing list of things I've had to eliminate for the sake of my health include gluten...and alcohol...and being Facebook friends with people who voted incorrectly in the last election.

But even though I'm in better condition overall, I'm finding that with age, gross things like this happen with increasing frequency:

What is this you ask? Well, other than sexy, it's what is known as a ganglion cyst. These show up around joints - usually wrists and elbows - and can be dealt with by getting them lopped off, getting them aspirated, or whacking them with a bible. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.

Of course this emerged just as we moved into summer and sleeveless shirts, so I'm completely embarrassed and self-conscious about this recent development.

And the ever-supportive Brutalism family has been so sweet - they alternate between referring to this as my "bulbous elbow" or "Popeye arm."

I was sharing this with one of my best friends (as one does), and sent her the above pic so she could see for herself that I was morphing into the Elephant Man. She was very kind and told me that she would not even notice anything if I hadn't told her...and that it definitely did not look like a Popeye arm.

So I followed up with a second photo and asked her, "Do you see it now?"

Those are water droplets...not other weird growths. Although,
I'm sure that will happen soon enough.

If only I'd had a can of spinach on hand,
Brutalism

Frowny Face Emoji

A few weeks ago, I toured a local fire station with my daughter's girl scout troop. The girls were working toward their first aid badge, so the firefighters and paramedics talked to them, gave them some hands-on demonstrations and were generally fantastic. They are all obviously passionate about what they do, they all had great senses of humor, and they handled inquiries from our group such as, "What was the grossest call you ever went on?" delicately and expertly enough so that the girls would not have nightmares for weeks. (NOTE: they also fielded the question of "what does that mean?" asked by one of the girl scouts who was pointing at a sign above a firefighter's bunk that read, "Fartaholic sleeps here.")

The girls learned a lot - and so did I. For instance, did you know that you can now text 9-1-1 instead of calling? 

When I mentioned I had read this bit of information on a fire engine, one of the other women in our group asked, "Why would someone text rather than call?" And the Lieutenant explained, "Well, they may be in a situation where they don't want someone to hear them calling 9-1-1, or they may not speak English..."

And then I helpfully chimed in, "Also, they may prefer to illustrate their emergency using only emojis."

Which is why I spent a considerable part of the next couple of hours figuring out different emergencies I could illustrate using emojis and then texting them to my buddy (and one of the firefighters who gave us the first aid instruction), Jeff.

While I think it can occasionally be fun to be my friend, I also believe it can be fairly exhausting...and require a lot of data usage.

Some emergencies I feel are rather self-explanatory:

And some that may require a bit more explanation:

= I'm being fatal attractioned

= I have become a cartoon character

= I am possessed by the devil

= I have been single white femaled

= the market and I are having bad days

= I am being forced to watch "Fifty Shades of Gray"

= I ate some bad sushi

= again, self-explanatory


= I've "Richard Gere'd" myself


= It's a "Seven" situation...

= you're too late


= my head is stuck in a vice grip







First responders love me,
Brutalism

Something Doesn't Feel Right

In the past few weeks, I've mistakenly worn my underwear inside out two times. I feel like I should be embarrassed about this, yet I've simply accepted it as the next phase of my life.

Both times, I realized this at the end of the day while getting ready for bed. And both times I shared this fact with my daughter...who mocked me, both relentlessly and justifiably.

Yesterday was a first, however, when I realized at the end of the day that my underwear was not inside out (yay, me!) Rather, I had put it on backwards and worn it that way for the entire day.

A simple mistake, right?

Except that it was a thong.

I Need A Stiff One

In my daughter's 11 years, she has (unfortunately) learned to cope with death.

We've lost beloved family members, friends, neighbors, and pets.

And it breaks my heart.

For the loss of life, of course, and also because she loses a little more of her innocence as she realizes that nothing is guaranteed and that life is not always fair.

I was discussing this with a friend, who relayed a story about her pet cat, Alice, who died when her son was young. She learned about the pet's passing when her son came upstairs from the basement with the cat in his arms and said, "Mommy, I think there's something  wrong with Alice."

And in fact, there was -- the cat was in full rigor mortis.

Perhaps they stay innocent a little longer than we realize,
Brutalism

I Also Hear Tito Has A Nice Vodka

Recently, I was editing a document at work.

The writer had described something as "being germaine [sic]" to some of the findings on our program.

I'm still trying to determine how a founding member of the Jackson 5 is relevant to our government contract.

A B C is not as easy as 1, 2, 3,
Brutalism

Qu'est-ce que c'est?

A while back, I was in my home office watching a TED talk by Sally Kohn where she described herself as a "talking head."

My daughter, who was on the other side of the desk and could not see the screen, ran over to my side of the desk and asked incredulously, "She's a head?"

Knowing my daughter's thought process (and having a sad flashback to the mini/Minnie hot dogs debacle at Disney World when she was younger), I patiently explained that a talking head is someone who expresses their opinion on television, not someone who is actually a disembodied head.

Crestfallen, she shrugged and said, "well, that's a letdown" and returned to her side of the desk.

Although frankly, that's a TED talk I would like to see.