Coralineisms #008: Tooth fairies to stinky bananas

Sometimes I'll post conversations I have with my 3-year-old granddaughter Coraline that I call Coralineisms on Facebook. Some are sweet one-liners, like this one:

"Did you dream about me last night, Mamá?"

And this one:

"When I grow up, I'm going to be a tooth fairy!"

Most are conversations, like this one:

Me, singing beautifully: Let it go. Let it go. Can't hold it ...
Coraline: Stop! Stop singing my song. That song is MY song.
Me: I can sing that song if I want to.
Coraline: No, you can't. That's my song. You sing your own song.
Me: What's my song?
Coraline: "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." That's your song. You sing that.
Me: Why do I have to have "Twinkle, Twinkle..." for my song? I don't want that song.
Coraline: That's a beautiful song. It's fine for you.
Me: No, I don't choose that song. (singing) Let it go ....
Coraline: Fine. We can share my song. I'll split it with you.
Me: That's so generous.
Coraline. I know. I know. I'll just cut it in half.
Me: Thank you.
Coraline: You can only sing your part in the winter.
Me: I hate winter.
Coraline: It's a winter song.

Or this one, which is a continuation of a conversation about the Frozen theme song you might remember from this post:

Coraline (singing): Ready go ... Ready go ....
Me (singing): Let it go .... Let it go ....
Coraline: It's "Ready go."
Me: No, I keep telling you, it's "Let it go."
Coraline: That's what I sing at Grandma's house and at Mommy's house. But here I sing "Ready go."
Me: What??? You sing "Let it go" at Grandma's house and Mommy's house, and you only sing "Ready go" here at my house?
Coraline: Yes. (singing) Ready go .... Ready go ...."

Me: You're a stinker.

Coraline: Ready go ....

And this one:

Coraline: I need a tissue! (Always a crisis.)
Me: OK. Here you go.
Coraline, after a big honking blow: That's the way my nose pees.

And another:

I'm using a tablespoon to clean out a jar I've just shaken up whipped cream in. As I'm licking the stem of the spoon ...

Coraline: Euww. Why are you licking that spoon's bottom?
Me: Spoons don't have bottoms.
Coraline: That one does, and you're licking its bottom. That's icky.

Bear with me:

Coraline: Be careful of your heart.
Me: Why? What's going on with my heart?
Coraline: Next week it's going to fall out. And you're going to have babies in your tummy.
Me: Can't wait.

Finally, for those of you who are Facebook friends and may have seen most of my Coralineisms, a new bathtub conversation from last Thursday:

Coraline: Mamá, I have a vagina.

Me: Yes, you do.

Coraline: And you have a vagina too.

Me: I do. It hasn't been excavated in a while, but I'm sure it's still there somewhere.

Coraline: And Mommy has a vagina too.

Me: Yes, Mommy has a vagina.

Coraline: Daddy doesn't have a vagina though.

Me: No, what does Daddy have?

Coraline: Daddy has a stinky banana!

Me (LOL):  A stinky banana? You mean a penis, right?

Coraline: Yes, a penis that's a stinky banana.

Me: OK. Close enough.

Coraline: What's a penis for?

Me: They have a couple of purposes. The only one you need to know about right now is that men pee out of them.

Coraline: Men pee out of bananas?

Me: Out of penises.

Coraline: Oh ..... Aunt Montana has a vagina.

Me: Yes.

Coraline: Uncle Drake has a stinky banana.

Me: I'm not going to win this one, am I?

Coraline: No. Carly has a vagina.

Me: Yes, she does.

Coraline:  Shaun has a stinky banana.

Me: [sigh] Yes, Shaun has a penis ...... (The list goes on.)

Friday Funnies: When Mary Poppins shows up, goats scramble

I've been thinking about renting a goat. I know I've talked in the past about getting a boyfriend, but I've got a bunch of English ivy in my front yard that I'd like to replace with perennial flowers. I can either break my back pulling it up every two weeks for the rest of my life, or I can get a goat. I'm leaning toward the goat. One that's recently weaned a kid and can still be milked would be even better. Feta!

I see no downside other than that I'll have poop from one more animal to clean up.

Anybody ever rented a goat? What was your experience? Anybody have a small, lactating urban goat I can rent?

That's not exactly what I meant by a boob job, honey

Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post. (I have to write that so nobody thinks I'm being paid to try to talk you into buying the products mentioned in this post. So buy them or don't, because I don't realize income from this blog ever. But if you do buy anything you see here, please send photos and an entertaining story.)

I was reading Dan Savage's advice column the other day. Savage, if you haven't heard of him, gives advice on all things sexual, and even lots of things I wouldn't consider sexy, but somebody does. It's not for the naive. Or maybe it is if you need to get up to speed. I don't read Savage Love to get ideas -- who would I use them with anyway? -- but because it's entertaining and often makes me glad I'm single.

So a woman wrote to complain about her fiance, who refused to have sex with her nearly as often as she'd like. He would, in fact, turn her down and then go beat off in another room while he watched porn. Apparently one of his kinks is super-enhanced breasts, and she doesn't have "got their own zip code" boobs, so he'd rather have sex with his computer screen. There was more to her story, but this is the part that interested me. One thing Savage advised to turn the fiance's head toward a flesh-and-blood woman is this costume that would supposedly satisfy his boob kink and entice him to release the death grip he's got on his own penis.

(Photo credit: justinlatex.com.uk)

And I thought Spanx™ were uncomfortable.

I couldn't help imagining how this might play out. She gets her normal woman body all dolled up in some sexy lingerie and stretches out on the bed in a seductive pose. He walks into the bedroom and says, "Oh, I see you're ready for bed. Go ahead and go to sleep. I've got myself some stuff to do on my computer."

Fine, she thinks. I'm going to take Dan Savage's advice and give him what he wants. So she  dons her red rubber cat suit with inflatable breasts and pumps those puppies up as high as they'll go with a bicycle pump.

She squeaks her way into the other room where he's pumping himself and fantasizing about rubbing his wiener between something that looks like this.

And his poor fiance, zipped up  head to toe in a giant red balloon, offers him something that looks like this.

I mean, holy watermelons, Batman! What man in his right mind wouldn't turn the computer off immediately and take her right there on the spot? I'm feeling a little flushed myownself just looking at those hot pink globes of wonder.

J.K., Dear Readers. I love boobs -- who doesn't? But those aren't boobs. They're literally flotation devices.

This is probably why I'm single, and for two-fold reasons. One, because lots of single men would rather fantasy-fuck the perfect, probably much younger, woman of their imaginations on their computers than have to look at the horrifying bodies of a real women their own age. Women who look like them, only ... you know, female.

And the second reason is that I'm not even willing to squeeze into a pair of Spanx™ to impress a man. I'm sure as hell not going to shoe-horn my entire body into a cat suit with beach-ball boobs. Honestly, if a guy couldn't get off to my luscious real breasts (because my boobs are great, just not weirdly enormous) .... if he had to look at breasts that are surgically enhanced distorted to the point that they don't look like human body parts ... well, then he really does need to go fuck himself.

And a lot of guys do just that, which is going to keep the vibrator companies in business for a very long time, because women aren't sitting around pining for the penises that will never emerge from the dim porn portals of the internet.

I'm not going off on a rant about porn, because it's here to stay. But I will say I know women in real life who struggle with this very same issue. Their husbands are cheating on them with their laptops -- and I do call it cheating if his primary sexual relationship is with the electronic images of other women. It's not just men who get turned down for sex, and I think it's happening to women more and more these days. And women are being advised by gay sex columnists to do whatever they have to do to keep up with the porn industry.

However, I'm not going to judge if you look at that stunning red cat suit and you think, Damn. I would look FINE in that shiny latex skin, and I would love to bounce those pumped up ta ta's with my guy (or gal). You should absolutely go for it. And send pics, which I will post, no questions asked.

You can tell where I stand. I'm flexible to an extent, but I would laugh so hard at even the suggestion that I put that thing on .... Ummmm ..... no and hell, no. But I don't have a dog in this fight. I don't have a relationship to save. What do you think? Would you do whatever you could to compete with the fantasy on the screen? Or would you draw the line at faking what's already a fake body part?

Wordless Wednesday: We all know chickens should not smoke

(Wordless Wednesday: The night when Reticula goes to karaoke and listens to her friends sing, and although she comes home with some really good stories, the combination of too much wine and too many hours makes her lazy tired and word-resistant. And so she posts some crazy, random photo that doesn't require a comment, although many could be made. In that vein, if you feel a comment coming on, please feel free to write one below. Wordless Wednesday only applies to Reticula. You may add as many words as you feel compelled to write in the comments below. PS, children should not smoke.)

Get some plastic surgery already!

I just finished watching Boyhood. It was OK. Kind of like watching somebody's home movies. Totally character-driven. I couldn't discern a plot. In the past week I've also watched Gone Girl and Whiplash. For me, the Oscar goes to Whiplash, but that's not the one I'm going to talk about.

When I watch the Academy Awards, I usually haven't seen any of the Best Picture nominees. Or maybe I've seen one. So what I remember is the hype about each film. And what I remember most about Boyhood is the comments about how brave Patricia Arquette was, how utterly devoted to her art, because 1. her weight fluctuated during those 11 years  the movie was being made and 2. she didn't have any work done during the time it took to film the movie. I'm a little ashamed to admit, I was curious to see how radically this woman must have changed during those 11 years. How hideous she must have become that people praised her for being courageous and committed enough to forego plastic surgery.

Here's her hideous face, in case you haven't seen the movie. And get ready for it, because I am not fucking kidding you, when I googled images of her, I could choose from a few select packages of images of her: movies, teeth, 2014, Boardwalk Empire, Boyhood, Oscars and age. That's right. Teeth. Seems to me only a monster would get an entire category for her teeth, especially given the elevated status of those other selections.

Here we go. Ready or not. Just peek if you're afraid.

AAAAHHHH! (That was a scream.) Please forgive me. Look at her workless face. How could she bear even going to the grocery store. I hope the production company found ways to keep her hidden away until the movie had been made. Surely no woman should have to bear the burden of keeping her original face for 11 fucking years! Now that I've watched the movie, I can certainly understand all the concern. She really did give up the best years of her career, and she did it without a plastic surgeon.

I had to wonder though, was anybody concerned about whether Ethan Hawke had to forego cosmetic surgery? Because, while he's certainly a talented actor, he's not what I would call traditionally handsome. In fact, his charm comes more from the characters he plays than from his good looks. And, not to be critical, but his teeth don't look like his parents mortgaged their house for orthodontia. I could be wrong though, because Google isn't given me an option to select only teeth photos for him. In fact, the choices for him are all about his work except for one about Uma Thurman. (I don't know her plastic surgery status, but I'm sure Google does.)

I have no desire to trash Hawke, because I think he's a talented guy, and he even looks like he laughs a lot. He's probably of fun to hang around with. I'm certainly not going to suggest he needs plastic surgery more than Arquette does.

But isn't it a bunch of horse shit that people were so concerned that she went 11 years without anybody cutting on her face, and he can look as craggy and  rustic as any other 45-year-old guy.

Here they are together. If you were going to give a free gift card to a plastic surgeon, which one of them would you choose to send under the scalpel?

Neither, you say? Yeah, me either. Fuck that. I like real people better. I'm sick of impassive plastic faces and over-inflated boobs and amputated labias.

I realize  Boyhood is old news. Most movies I watch are old news. But what's not old news, because that shit won't go away, is that women aren't supposed to be human. If we want to have any cred at all in the world, we're not supposed to age or gain weight or have a gap in our teeth, although a gap between our thighs is fan-fucking-tastic. (I'm not actually sure what the story is with Arquette's teeth. I refuse to click on that.) And it's hard enough to just be a normal women, but to watch a beautiful, talented woman's performance come down to stories about how she turned into a toad right in front of our eyes because she couldn't have a face-lift .... 

I wish I hadn't been looking for that when I watched the movie. I wouldn't even have thought about her aging, because it really is just the way life works. We age, especially mothers. My experience was polluted by the bullshit expectations of the media.

And probably too by the news of Dr. Fredric Brandt's suicide this week. I will admit, initially it was hard to sympathize with him. He was one of the most famous plastic surgeons in the world, and he's responsible for creating many of those plastic faces we see on TV and in movies. But his death highlighted so clearly this hypocritical, conflicted culture where the people who entertain us, especially women, are supposed to try to look as young as is surgically possible for as long as they can, and then we mock them or parody them for doing it or for not doing it well enough.

It's hard enough being a human being without all that. I hope Patricia Arquette never lets a plastic surgeon near her body. But if she does, who could blame her? Aging on purpose to entertain us in an Oscar-nominated movie is one thing. Doing it just because that's what all organisms do is not acceptable.

Bleh. I need to stop being so damn serious this week. I feel a post about vaginas coming on ...