Three weird things about me: #2

2. I'm a weird grandma. People will say to me -- because it's obvious I dote on this child -- "Oh, I'll bet you have fun spoiling that granddaughter of yours! You probably spoil her every chance you get."

Sorry to disappoint. Nope. First, I don't really know what it means to spoil a kid. She's not meat. Well, technically parts of her are meat. Let me rephrase that. She's not milk.

And second, I'm not much different with Coraline than I was with my kids. I certainly shop a lot less for her than I did for them. I have one basket of board books and cheap toys like big colorful pom poms, wooden blocks, an old telephone handset, and a farm animal See 'n Say. And there's a Little Tykes slide I bought for $5 at a garage sale and a blue plastic rocking horse I paid about the same for. That's it. I rarely buy her clothes, unless it's for a special occasion, although I've been known to go wild and spend $12 at Good Will when I'm flush. OK, and I've sprung for her Christmas and birthday dresses because that was kind of written into the contract.

Her other grandmother buys her tons of shit. They have a toy room for her at their house. And she buys lots of clothes and shoes. And she gives her suckers and Pringles and lets her watch an Elmo video. I guess that would be called spoiling, but I don't think it will make her rotten. It's just a lot of stuff, and it makes her other grandma feel good to buy that stuff for her.

Even if I wanted to, my daughter Elvira would have to have "the talk" with me if I bought Coraline more stuff. Their house is full already. And I'm fine with that. Most of the toys I see in the stores require batteries so they can make annoying, or even alarming, noises. She had one that would randomly come to life and say, "Play with me!" and "I love you." That's some creepy fucking shit right there. Besides most of them are nothing more than advertisements for Disney or Sesame Street. Fuck that.

So I don't do any of that. We've watched a video of cows mooing at least 1000 times, but no Elmo here. Stuffed Cookie Monster, of course. I'm weird, not crazy.  But no Elmo videos.

It's not that I don't enjoy being generous. I do. But I don't want my relationship with Coraline to be based on what I buy her or what new thing I've got for her every time she comes to visit. Besides I played with rocks and good black Iowa dirt when I was a kid. She should consider herself lucky.

When she's here we go to a park or for a walk to the nearby art institute to visit the big steel lion sculpture she's taken a liking to. We read lots of books or just the same one over and over and over. We cook together. She stands on a chair and helps by splashing water and soap bubbles around in the sink. And by tasting a bit of everything I chop up. We water the flowers and tomatoes. It's surprising how entertaining that is to a 2-year-old. Or we rock in the rocking chair my grandma rocked both my mom and me in, and I sing to her. We manage to stay pretty fucking busy in spite of the sparsity of my toy box and my refusal to turn on the TV.

I don't give her much sugar (and of course I don't buy Happy Meals. See #1) because I don't think it's good for her. In other words, I won't buy her love with junk food either. We eat whole, unprocessed food like grilled chicken, steak, baked sweet potatoes, homemade yogurt .... and she likes it. I ate bugs and sticks when I was a kid. I suppose in this way I am spoiling her.

So I suspect I'm a weird grandma. I'm head over heels about that child, but I'm not a spoiler. I realize that could come back to bite my ass someday if she turns into a shallow little mall rat, but if that happens, I won't want to be around her either.

Besides, I'm a selfish bitch. I'd rather spend my money on drugs, sex and rock 'n roll wine and guitars ... for myself.

And that's another thing. I can safely say most grandmas don't play in a band. Or go out to karaoke a couple times a month. And I'm still not sure how I'll explain this blog someday -- especially that photo of me dancing on a pole. But it wouldn't matter what I did. There's a white-haired, slowed-down stereotype of what a grandmother is, and I don't fit it. I might someday, but for now I'm just fine with being a weird grandma.

Wordless Wednesday: Is that thing cocked?

http://www.amazon.com/Glass-Gun-Dildo/dp/B00CV03H66/ref=pd_rhf_se_p_tnr_8

(Reason number 475 why I shouldn't be allowed on Amazon after midnight without a chaperone. Ride 'em cowboy!)

(What is that purple blob shooting out of the barrel? Does that look vagina friendly? I don't think so! It looks like a Christmas tree light. If only it lit up!)

(Please buy me this for Christmas. Thank you.)

(The answer to the question you're dying to ask is absolutely no, I would not.)

(It's still Wordless Wednesday if the words are in parentheses. My blog. My rules.)

(Finally, when is the last time you liked my Facebook page? You should do it now.)

Three weird things about me: #1

1. I was driving home from church one Sunday when I realized I was ravenous. Hours earlier I'd run out of the house 5 minutes late as usual, and only had time to gobble down a cup of homemade yogurt before I left. My stomach felt twisted into a lonely knot, a feeling it's not used to. Poor thing never misses a meal or a snack. (Please don't ask me how my fucking diet's going. Still 25 pounds to go.)

I realized the pantry was kind of bare at home. I hadn't shopped for groceries in 2 weeks. As I considered my options, I realized it would probably be eggs again, at least until I could get to Kroger and stock up.

As I sat at a stop light waiting to turn onto the interstate ramp toward home, I was struck by a sudden revelation:  I'd just passed at least half a dozen fast food restaurants, and not once did I consider stopping and getting something to eat. Dozens .... no, thousands of people would drive through or  pick up food at those places that Sunday. They would just stop wherever they were and eat when they were hungry. Yet I didn't even consider doing that. In fact, I didn't even see those places as food options.

photo credit:
storageeffect.seagate.media.com

What the hell is wrong with me? I wondered. Why would I choose being hungry over stopping and seeing what they had to offer? Have I lost my instincts? Surely hunter/gatherers ate whatever they could find wherever they could find it, even if they had to eat bugs or dirty old roots. Fast food is our modern nuts and berries, isn't it? It's practically a paleo diet! Why didn't I just stop and get a delicious burger and fries like a normal person?"

Later that day two pieces of information crossed my Facebook newsfeed. The first one was this abstract of a study done of the ingredients in fast food burgers. Here's the relevant information. The researchers studied burgers from 8 different fast food restaurants, and discovered that "[f]ast food hamburgers are comprised of little meat (median, 12.1%). Approximately half of their weight is made up of water. Unexpected tissue types found in some hamburgers included bone, cartilage, and plant material; no brain tissue was present. Sarcocystis parasites were discovered in 2 hamburgers."

In other words, only about 12% of that fast food burger is burger. Half is water, but that leaves another 38% unaccounted for. It's that 38% that makes me suspicious.

And then my local newspaper posted a video of microscopic photos someone had taken of chicken mcnuggets.

Even though I find the video somewhat exploitative -- the music, the panning in on tiny unrecognizable spots, the repetitive shots -- what they're showing there doesn't look like food. Of course, neither does the pink goo in this video.

I can't put that shit in my mouth, and I've eaten a lot of weird foods, including everything from snails to turtles to testicles. I'm not easily grossed out, and I'm fine with eating all of the animal. Please do. But I also want to know what I'm eating; I want a choice about what I'm eating; and I want to know that what I'm eating is still food. That pink shit crosses the line.

I guess I'm just not that small-town Iowa girl who only got McDonald's in Des Moines at most once a year. Back then, a 25-cent cheeseburger, fries and an orange drink was such a delicious treat. It probably would still taste delicious, but I'm both jaded and sensitized to mystery meat, microscopic hairs and pink goo. It looks like stuff I'd expect to find in the Clone-a-Willy kit.

It's not that I only eat at home. I'm weird, but I'm not a freak. I eat out fairly regularly. When I do, I pay a little more for my food, but I eat where I know the food is real, and so are the people who own the restaurant. Sometimes I even know the owner. It's not as quick nor as easy as grabbing a burger and fries to eat on the road -- can't do that with a salad. I've tried. But I'd rather be hungry.

And given the number of burgers McDonald's alone has served, I think that makes me a weirdo.

If you were going to list the things that make you weird, what would be one of them?


Disclaimer: I don't give a shit if you eat McDonald's burgers and nuggets every day. It's really not my business. This is all about me. I will admit just writing this is making me crave a Wendy's single ... hard. If someone walked into my house with one, I'd insist on at least one bite. So if you do eat that shit, I'm not hatin'.

That penis looks homemade (NSFW unless you're a sex worker)

A little over a year ago I wrote a post about the Clone-a-Pussy kit. I'm surprised that it's been one of my most popular posts, especially with my many faithful Russian readers. (Вы, русские, что, как ваш порно, не так ли?)

I wouldn't be so disingenuous as to say I was surprised when a reader who wishes to remain anonymous sent me a link to the Clone-a-Willy kit. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, for fewer than

30 of your hard-earned dollars you too can clone your favorite penis .... Well, not clone exactly unless your favorite penis is made out of something other than skin and bones and ..... whatever else penises are made of. And unless it vibrates.

I suspect if more penises vibrated, more women would be hopping on Mr. Happypants more often and for longer periods of time. Just a suspicion.

You can clone a willy in different colors, including skin tone, white, glossy black, and hot pink. You can even make a glow-in-the-dark willy, so you can find it under the bed or out in the backyard after your kid finds it and plays fetch with the dog with it. I can't think of any other reasons why one would want to make an exact glow-in-the-dark replica of a particular penis, but maybe some of my readers can help me out here.

I tried to think of any time in my life when I would find this appealing and, folks, I got nothing. It's a fucking dildo. (Sorry for the redundancy.)

The text on the Amazon page says it's for couples, and I was one half of a couple for a few decades. I suppose if I were an overly attached girlfriend more romantic I might have wanted a "second-best to the real thing" exact-ish replica of LtColEx's willy to keep me warm and satisfied while he was out there saving the world from the foreigners.

And yet, I couldn't even conjure up an image of us making the damn thing, much less me using it as a personal massager. (And since my kids read my blog, I hope they can't either.)

Maybe I just lack imagination.

Then I realized there were other options available that I might have really enjoyed making and using. For example, the plaster version might have been shit tons of fun to throw at someone as he was going out the door for the last time. Imagine the boner-busting crash it would make as it hit the door frame beside his head. I can think of more than one time I would have found that quite satisfying. "Get out, and don't let your dick hit you in the head on your way out!"

There's also a willy candle. Burn, baby, burn. Dickso inferno.

I suppose someone thought chocolate would be sexy, but .... OK, help me out here, my male readers. Would you really find it sexy to watch your partner eat an exact replica of your dick made out of chocolate? Because I think that would be rather macabre. And even if it were a turn-on, how long could you want to watch her eat an exact replica of your wiener made out of chocolate before you turned on the football game?

Evidently enough people struggled with the original clone-a-willy kit that the company had to make a novice kit. Hey, we were all virgins once. No shame in that.

You can even buy a "multi-product bundle." This one sounds more useful to me. You could use it for cloning workshops for couples who want to bring somebody new, but familiar, into their relationships.

Or, better yet, you could throw a party with the clone-a-willy party pack. Fuck Cards Against Humanity. Fuck karaoke. It's craft night and the cool kids are going to clone a penis tonight. BYOP.

I dunno. It seems to me the manufacturer of the Clone-a-Willy kit is missing the opportunity to make their product truly useful. How about a Clone-a-Willy flashlight? Or a Clone-a-Willy ballpoint pen? Maybe a Clone-a-Willy bottle opener. Or a Clone-a-Willy lip balm. I might go for a Clone-a-Willy flash drive. Or a Clone-a-Willy paper towel dispenser.

My god, people, if I had a man in my life I'd have proto-willy inventions all over my house!

Somebody please tell me you're willing to try this and at least send me photos of the process and the results. (That's not the same as sending a selfie, is it?) You know you want to. Just do it.

If you make the chocolate one, I promise I'll eat it.

30 Days Hath September ....

I was an extra for one show out of a 3-weekend local production of 45 Seconds from Broadway today. That means I waited in the green room for 2 1/2 hours so I could sit at a table in a pretend restaurant on stage, eat pound cake drizzled with Hershey's syrup, drink tepid tea, pretend to talk with the woman I was sitting with, and ignore the rest of the action on stage. I was fucking brilliant. I'm not sure about the people who had actual lines. I wasn't allowed to look at them, so I didn't listen to them either lest I should inadvertently giggle.

While I waited in the green room, I sat on a couch and talked with the two people I brought with me to do the scene. One is a fellow blogger wannabe. She was inspired to blog after we met at a party, but alas, she's only posted once. Her perfectionism has paralyzed her ability to publish.

So as we sat there we talked about how she has several posts written, but she just can't seem to finish them and post them to her blog. I felt her pain. I have a bunch of those posts .... OK, I haven't actually written them. I've just written copious notes and a rough draft  obsessed about thought about some shit I want to write about someday. Usually when I was in the shower, where I do my best plotting thinking.

As we talked I was feeling so flattered that she'd started a blog just because I have one that I heard these words coming out of my mouth: "Hey, you know what helps me is making a commitment to write every day for a month. Then I don't have any choice about writing because I have readers who will jump up my generous ass if I don't keep my promise. If you'll write every day in September, I will too."

Inside my head a voice was shouting, Shut the fuck up, you large stupid idiot! What the fuck are you committing us to now? You promised we would go to bed earlier and get up earlier. And don't you remember the official NaBloPoMo (National Blog Post Month) is in November. That's, like, only 2 months away. What the fuck were you thinking? You'd better hope she says no .... Do you even fucking remember we're going to Chicago in less than a week? Are you going to spend your time in Chicago writing blog posts? OMMFG! You're such an asshole. If she says yes ... "

She said yes. I'm sure this is what a fellow feels like after he gets drunk and proposes and she says yes and he's aaaaalllll fucking in now because there's no going back from proposals and promises to blog and genital warts.

So I'm going to post something here every day in September. You'll probably see lots of vaginas. No, literally, I'm going to show you vaginas. And maybe a couple of rants on .... well, I'll have wait for those to come to me. I'm over Miley Cyrus, so you can open your eyes. 

Mostly I'll probably write about vaginas, because that seems to be a popular topic.

(I just want to take a parenthetical moment here to thank all of my readers who introduce me to their friends as "Reticula ... she writes about vaginas a lot." Very flattering. I have no idea why I never get laid.)

And dating. I promise to get back to the sordid saga of 10 Dates, 10 Men™. You might want to fasten your seatbelt check your gag reflex at the door double up on your Xanax when you see those posts coming. I've got some screen captures that will cause me you to slide into a deep, Mercury-in-retrograde black hole of depression. And I've got a story about 1 of 10 that I should have told months ago. Let's just say for now that it ends with him discovering I have no soul. Big fucking deal, right? What has your soul ever done for you? At least my vagina smells like rain.

To kick off the month, I'm going to give you a gift. I don't really encourage you to read any of the other bazillion bloggers out there, but I do encourage you to read Sunny Haralson's freshly minted book Beauty Tips for the Bereaved on your Kindle.

That's not really a gift, you say? Bullshit. Until Labor Day at midnight, that book is free. So it is a fucking gift because I told you about it and I said so. (I don't get paid for anything I write here, so this is not an ad.)

Anyway, I'm sure the book will be a crazy ride just like her blog. I've been anticipating it for months now. So read it, because it takes balls and many hours and days and nights to write a fucking book and she did it.

One down. Only 29 to go. What the fuck was I thinking?