Ready .... let it go!

My granddaughter Coraline is three years old now. Three is the age of agency, and Coraline grabs hers hard and holds on to it with a death grip. She may not understand how everything in the world works, but what she does grasp, she locks down hard with all the stubbornness she can muster. Like how rock and roll works. She knows. And how to drink tea: pinkies up.

And the words to the theme song from her favorite movie, Frozen.  She was singing the song in the back of my van last week, and I was amazed that she seemed to know all the words. I was also surprised to hear her sing, "Ready, go ... Ready, go ...." I asked her, "Is that the name of that song? I thought it was 'Let It Go.'" She told me no, it's "Ready, go." OK.

Thursday she was here for our weekly visit, and she wanted to watch the video on Youtube. So I turned it on my computer, and we watched. Or I thought we were watching until I realized she wasn't with me. She was behind me acting out every one of Elsa's moves as she sang along with the song. It was adorable, and I thought she pegged both the acting and the lyrics.

And then I realized she was singing what the words sounded like, but she wasn't actually singing the words and had no idea what the lyrics meant. And she was singing, "Ready, go ... Ready, go ...."

"It's 'Let it go,'" I said.
"No, it's 'Ready, go,'" she corrected.
"Really, Coraline, I'm looking at the words right here on the screen. It's 'Let it go.'"
"It's 'Ready, go.'"
"Listen." I sang the words. "See? 'Let it go.'"
"No, Mamá, you're wrong. It's 'Reeaattty, go.'" She sang it for me.
"I'm looking right here. Right here! Come and look ... If only you could read." I realized I had no way to prove my rightness to her.
"Who told you it was 'Ready, go?'" I tried another angle.
"Carlie."
"Well, Carlie was wrong. It's 'Let it go.'"
"Well, Carlie is my best friend. You're my best grownup, Mamá, but Carlie is my best friend."
"Your best friend can be wrong, you know," I said.
"She's not though." Coraline wouldn't bend. (Multiply these lines by 20 to get a true idea of the conversation.)

I have to mention what an earworm that song is. I can't get it out of my head. Coraline spent the night and most of Sunday with me this past weekend. We watched the video of the song several times, so it was firmly stuck in my head. With more frequency than I'd like to admit, I'd burst into the chorus. I'd be cooking or driving down the highway in my van and without thinking I'd start singing, "Let it go ... Let it go ... Don't blah blah blah blah blah."

And from her carseat behind me Coraline would sing at the top of her lungs, "Ready, go .... Ready, go...."

And then we would have the same conversation as the one above again. We had that conversation at least a dozen times during our 24 hours together. Maybe more. I even showed her a video where we could see Demi Lovato sing it, and we could read her lips. Or at least I could read her lips. Coraline wasn't persuaded, because her best friend Carlie knows everything. I think I'm going to teach Coraline to read early so I can prove to her that Carlie is wrong, and I'm right.

That wasn't the only thing we disagreed about though. She's super excited that I'm getting a new puppy, but when I told her my new dog's name is going to be Doc, she said, "No, Mamá, you're wrong. Your new puppy's name will be LuLu."

"I don't like LuLu," I said. "My dog's name will be Doc."

"No, LuLu," she said confidently.

"I'm not kidding, Coraline. My dog's name is Doc."

"No, it's LuLu."

"No, it's definitely not LuLu. I don't like LuLu, not even a little bit." (Multiply these lines by 15.)

Later, when we weren't arguing over the "Let It Go" lyrics, we argued over the new puppy's name in the van. Same conversation as above times 5, and then I said, "Why do you want to name my dog LuLu? Do you know who LuLu is?"

"Yes, she's something something fairy queen and something something ...." I couldn't hear the story because she talks so softly in the van I have to make her repeat everything 3 or 4 times.

"That's not who LuLu is and you know it," I said.

"LuLu is your new puppy," she responded. "Ready, go! ... Ready, go! ..."

I realize it may sound like we argued all weekend, and I'll admit we had these two ridiculous conversations over and over. Neither of us gave an inch -- she didn't because she's three. I didn't because I'm right.

We were at Walmart buying a couple of dog beds and a chew toy when I said, "I wonder what color collar and leash I should buy for Doc."

"LuLu wants pink," Coraline said.

"His name will be Doc, and I don't think pink is the right color for a big, black dog. I'm thinking bright blue."

"LuLu wants pink," she insisted.

"Look," I said. "You already named my transgender male betta fish Lady Fish. Doc is a boy dog. I'm not going to name him LuLu and buy him him a pink collar and leash." I heard the guy standing behind us laugh.

"Your puppy will be a girl, and her name will be LuLu," Coraline said calmly, as if I hadn't even spoken.

"I've already chosen him, and he's a guy, and I will name him Doc," I said, just as calmly.

"LuLu. Your puppy is named LuLu."

I stopped the cart. "OK," I said. "We're going to settle this once and for all. You know who LuLu is, don't you?"

"She's your new puppy," Coraline said.

"No, LuLu is what you call your grandpa's wife. You call her LuLu, right?"

"Yes, I think so," she said.

"When you go to visit Grandpa and his wife, you call her LuLu, don't you?" I know the answer, of course.

"Yes, and your dog is going to be called LuLu too," she said.

"Much as I appreciate the irony of naming my dog after her, I think some people might not see the humor in it," I said. "The dog's name can't be LuLu. It has to be Doc."

"No," she said. "It's LuLu. And she'll be a girl doggy."

The overnight ended about 7:00 last night, and we were at a standstill. As she walked out to the car holding Rock Dad's hand, I sang after her, "Let it go .... Let it go ...."

And she sang back, "Ready, go .... Reattty, go ...."

She must get that stubbornness from her father's side. Or maybe it's just because she's three, but I know she'll see things my way eventually.

Or maybe I will just name my future new puppy LuLu. It's not such a bad name for a dog, is it?

Stubborn as a 3-year-old

Who are you calling weird?

I had an adorable post about my granddaughter Coraline written in my head tonight. It was a story of persistence and gender-bending and irony. But before I write another word, I need to know the answer to this question: Why do people keep posting this on my Facebook wall and sending it to me in private messages? Why me? It's not bad enough I was born with red hair, but I have to be a writer too? You know who you are .... all of you!

Light up my life

Someone posted on Facebook today that she had completely finished her Christmas shopping. And that made me think, Oh, shit! What if other people are out there Christmas shopping for me, and I haven't even posted my list here yet this year? This could be a disaster. So I decided I'd better do my part and post a few things I'd like to receive for Christmas and make everybody's job a little bit easier.

How well, you might ask, has posting your Christmas list on your blog worked in years past? I'd have to answer not that well. OK, utter failure. In fact, let's just say I'm continuing my list from last year and the year before and the year before that ..... Nobody has given me any of those items, although I had such high hopes for the vagina coloring book.

Nevertheless, any of you who have ever ridden in a car while I was driving will want to run right out and get me this Facial Expression 5 Message Car Emoticons Signal LED Display Light.

It's a fuck-you tail light with a smiley face for when you hit the afterburners! Genius! The description says the light contains "thank you, back off, sorry, smile and wink face[s]."  Maybe somebody in China thinks flipping someone the middle finger is a digital (as in finger) wink, but you and I know better.

Can you imagine a more satisfactory expression of road rage than a big, red LED bird flashing from the rear of my car as I finally pass that ubiquitous asshole who's texting while driving five under in the left lane next to two semis playing "pass me, pass you"? I can't. I need this thing. It's only $38.95 and the shipping is free. A generous person could have Amazon wrap it and send it directly to my home where I would put it under my Christmas tree (if I get it up before Christmas) to open Christmas morning.

I'm not going to beg, but please?

If you want to know what not to get me, it would be this penis-shaped water bottle. I'm pretty sure the fun went out of drinking water from a penis sometime back in the 80's. This just goes to prove not everything should be made into a penis and sucked on.

I know some of you will shop late in spite of your good intentions this year, so don't worry. I'll find other items for my list and post them over the next few weeks. You'll be able to get me something cool. I'll act surprised, because I can't remember what I ate for breakfast today, much less what I wrote here a week ago or a month ago. Some of you have had the experience of saying to me at a party, "Hey, Reticula, I really liked that post you wrote about blah blah blah vaginas." And me saying, "I wrote about what? I had no idea you could do that with a vagina! I would write about that, if I hadn't already. Are you sure you read it on my blog?"

Lists are good. Don't lose this one.

My new guy(s)

It's Feminism Friday! And I have a witty, bitter-like-strong-Ethiopian-coffee post running on the hamster wheel in my head. It's been there all week. But speaking of the week, it's been a rough one. Some good things, sure. A friend took me out to dinner. Drake and Montana showed up for an unexpected weekend visit tonight. A friend bailed me out and took me to pick up my van at the shop after I'd decided I'd have to take a cab. I made two pots of soup (more on soup in a later post). 

It's also been a rough week. People in my life are tense. We got our first light snow of what promises to be a long season. One of my favorite students was whisked back to Canada by her family with little notice, and won't be coming back. Another was taken out to homeschool with one of those awful online charter schools, and although I homeschooled my kids for 12 years and I fully support it, I don't think it's best for her. Losing two of my best writers in one week sucks. I'm going to miss both of them. My van needed some repairs, and it was a dramatic pain in the ass. Other drama happened with other people and situations, and then some more drama. Most of it was simply a matter of intolerance or people not minding their own damn business.

Speaking of times when I wish I could mind my own business, I can't get those greasy photos of Kim what's-her-name out of my head, and I don't understand why so many words are wasted on her. She's got a big ass. So what. We have to look at photos of it all covered in oily oil? What has she ever done to make her ass so important?

The bottom line is that I don't want to dive into a rant about a ridiculous comment a ridiculous man left here earlier this week. because I've had enough unpleasantness for one week. I will though, and soon. Just not tonight.

Tonight I'm probably going to jinx myself, but I'm going to introduce you to the little guy who I think will be my new canine companion. I wrote about my dog dilemma a few months ago, and I've continued to struggle with it.  I won't rehash that because the pros and cons remain the same.

But .... I hate to admit this .... I've been feeling lonely lately. I'm not sure why, because it's not really like me. I'm too busy to feel lonely, or bored for that matter. But I have been. I've even left a couple of social occasions because I felt lonely in a crowd of people. Once I apparently really hurt and pissed off someone I consider a good friend, and the other time I'd paid to be there but I left before dinner. I doubt anybody noticed, but the idea of having someone to come home to -- even a non-human someone -- seemed like a good solution to the problem.

So I got serious about the search for a new standard poodle (spoo). I dug through lots of ads for really expensive, pedigreed, fancy pups. I sent out a few emails to the ones that were in my price range within 3 hours distance. And I'm pretty sure I've found him.

His name is Henry now, but I'm going to call him Doc. I don't know why. I've just had that name in my head for my next dog for a long time. He'll be ready to come and live with me Thanksgiving weekend. He lives 3 hours away, but Montana and Drake live close to him, so they'll probably go introduce themselves sooner.

Here's another photo of him with his sire. How fucking adorable is that?

I hope I'm not jumping the gun by sharing this so soon, but I'm excited. I'm ready for a new man to come into my life, even if he is a furry little guy who will only end up weighing about 65 pounds. It's time.

I've also decided to acquire a new boyfriend. Not one made of flesh and bone and corpuscles, but the one who lives in my imagination. The one who's more likely to become manifest in my life than any real man. I don't have a name for him yet, and I'm not even sure what he looks like. But he's there just hanging out with my Muse Dolores, waiting to become my imaginary lover.

More on both of my new guys in posts to come. I'll let you know which one pees on the floor first.

And you thought your vagina was weird .... NSFW?

I know it's not vagina Sunday yet, but it is my blog and tonight is a vagina night. But not a human vagina night, because haven't you ever wondered about the vaginas of the other species on this planet? I mean, they don't walk on two legs and have opposable thumbs, so it's possible there are other differences. And it's not as if vaginas are right out there where we can all see and compare them.

It's no secret I think and talk and write a lot about vaginas. I wonder about vaginas, those mysterious gateways to life. We've all been in one, each and every one of us -- head-first if we were lucky.

Did you know kangaroos have 3 vaginas? A faithful reader sent me an article about the lack of research of animal vaginas, and that enticed me to click away on the endless variations on the vagina in the animal kingdom. (Wait a damn minute! Why am I talking about vaginas in a kingdom? Damn the patriarchy.)

Anyway, back to the triple-vagina-ed kangaroo, I suppose it's not surprising to learn an animal that carries its young in a pouch with a nipple on the back wall might also possess more vaginas than the rest of the animal world. When I read that I felt a little sad though. Who needs 3 vaginas? One is definitely enough, and even 3 is one or two too many for a standard 3-way. But let's talk clitorises! Three clits would be something to talk about! That would be a recipe for simultaneous orgasms.

I digress ...

OK, so the trifecta of vaginas isn't sexy at all. One carries the sperm in, the other carries the joey out, and the third joins everything up there with the outside world. Fuck it. Here's the photo I stole from the article. See? Not sexy.

(Screenshot from Inside Nature's Giants, an animal autopsy documentary)

Kangaroos aren't the only animals with unusual -- compared to human -- vaginas. Ducks apparently coined the word "screw" because of their weird, yet compatible, yet not compatible, coiled penises and opposing vaginas. It's a kinky example of evolution screwing the male ducks -- who apparently rape the poor female ducks, although how do we know for sure? Did the female duck file a police report? Anyway, the male duck's penis has a clockwise twist and the lady duck's vagina has a counterclockwise twist, and if I tell you any more about it, shit will get weird, and this post is no longer about vaginas.

Awww, fuck it. Here's a video of a duck's penis in action. Why not? Not surprisingly, the video only lasts 11 seconds.

And ..... Wow. That was 11 seconds of "I don't know how the fuck they did that." Do people get paid to masturbate ducks? You know, my grandmother was a nurse, and she always said all penises look alike. Apparently in all her years on the farm, she never witnessed a duck hard -on. 

The authors of the original article, which is lost up there among the exploding duck dicks, researched the amount of research about animal penises versus animal vaginas. Of course, the vaginas lost. It's easy to see why, isn't it?

How many of you women know what your vagina looks like? Not the outer bits, like inner and outer labia. Men, you know what your penis looks like, and you could pick it out of a crowd, right? We're just not easy to study, whether we're human women or women of another species. We're mysterious, private, visually unattainable. Our lovely vaginas hold secrets (and if you've been reading along this week, other things too). And I still have questions, like do duck vaginas smell like nice fresh trout?

The articles I linked to up there are fascinating, all junior high humor aside. I learned about cave insects that flip roles -- the female has a penis-like appendage that she pokes into the male's sperm pouch to get some genetic material. The only thing vagina-like about it is the cave they live in.

This post represents the sum total of my experience with animal vaginas except for a golden retriever I once owned who experienced a difficult birth. I've pretty much blocked that experience from my mind though, so I think it's best not to drag it out and examine it.

Do any of you have any inter-species vaginal stories to tell? Surely I'm not the only one. Bueller? .... Bueller? ......