THE MEANING OF FRIENDSHIP

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Hi there you. Yes, you.

You are reading personal information in a public space. About your friend.

Your friend is someone's niece... someone's daughter... someone's granddaughter... someone's secret crush.

For you to have read information about your friend and threatened your friend to spread rumors about her is not only completely uncool. It's evidence that you are not a very good friend.

I found this poem for you and I hope you can read and understand it. It's about the value of a friend.

Sometimes you only understand the value of a friend after you have lost her. I hope that doesn't happen to you.

Either way, you have taught me something very important: that you are not trustworthy. And so this space will no longer contain information that you can use to hurt anyone else.

A BEST FRIEND
A best friend is always there,whether you need advice,or a pep talk, or even a shoulder to cry on.
A best friend listens with her heart and is always honest with you, even though the truth may not be what you want to hear.
A best friend knows all your secrets, understands your fears, shares your dreams.
A best friend never stops believing in you, even if you give upon yourself.
You are that kind of friend to me.
And no matter what happens, you always will be.
You are my best friend....my forever friend.

By: Renee Duvall

O'REILLY IS DEAD...

Sunday, February 22, 2009

You guys all know this song, right:

O'Reilly is dead and his brother don't know it.
His brother is dead and O'Reilly don't know it.
They both are dead and lying in bed,
And neither one knows that the other is dead.

I used to think - how comforting for them actually. Until today.

While I was wrestling with some purchases for Sarah (the world's pickiest preteen), Don had done all the shopping and was ready to leave Target. I told him - why don't you just go back and load the car, and go somewhere else with Becca while we finish? I took his cell phone and he was to retrieve my cell phone from the car - then we could communicate at will.

Problem was, I was the only one with the car keys. But I didn't know that. I wandered around for hours - trying to call Don and then getting progressively more pissed off because he was ignoring me - then getting worried and wondering what had become of he and Becca.

Meanwhile his cell phone was ringing, but from numbers I didn't recognize. I figured his friends or workmates were trying to get ahold of him, so I let the calls ring through to voice mail. Of course they were Don - trying to call me from other phones because he couldn't get to my cell phone locked in the car.

Eventually, Don and Becca walked home three miles and Sarah and I found the car and drove home. And we each thought we were going to have to call 911 to reporting the other missing!

I don't really know what the moral of this story is. Perhaps it's that cell phones have made us a bit lazy. 20 years ago, parties splitting up would have agreed on a meeting place and time. Perhaps in our house, we ought to go back to that.

TRAUMA FLASHBACK #1

OK so the first major childhood memory that I was reliving in my spare time (in between wondering if Don and Becca were abducted by aliens, and arguing with Sarah): my first bra fitting.

My mom decided that I needed a bra. I'm not sure how old I was - probably she'll comment on this post (in the process of denying the whole thing) and tell us all. Anyway, do you think she saw this as an opportunity to bond with me? Or at least to leave me in a state of high self esteem? Oh no. She was thinking that the most important thing was to have me measured right.

My mom was rather obsessed with measurement. She tested each of us kids 3 different times for IQ during her PhD study but she never told us how we scored. She also liked to take us to Toby's Stride Rite because Toby really knew how to measure feet. Well, my grandfather was a shoe guy too, so maybe the measuring thing got drummed into hear head in her own past trauma, I don't know.

Anyway, she was thinking that she was not trustworthy to put a tape measure around me and haul me over to JC Penny's in peace, so she took me to a place called Margaret's Corset Shop.

Oh yeah. Margaret's does a brisk business - in fact, it's still there on Maryland in St. Louis.

Margaret's is not really the Victoria's Secret of St. Louis. To my childlike mind - it was like a part of a scary movie. Margaret's had a specialty in mastectomy supply. Yup. The mannequins all looked like this:

And corset isn't Margaret's middle name for nothin'. It made me wonder: oh my God, what the HELL IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO ME??? If I wasn't terrified of maturing before then, I sure was after getting a load of the merch at Margaret's.

suck it in, baby.

My mother did not even bother to warn me so I walked into the freaky woman body part situation completely cold.

The little bell on the door rang. And out crept a small woman. She hobbled over to us - I swear she was no taller than I was at the time - and my mom told her we were there to get measured for a proper brassiere.

So she led me to a dressing room and pulled the curtain shut. I took off my shirt and she took out her measuring tape. And she had THE COLDEST AND GNARLIEST HANDS KNOWN TO ALL MANKIND. And then said, "oh, you're developing nicely, dear."

Really. And I still grew up kind of ok. One of the bras from that trip was white with a little pink flower in the middle. I liked that one. Hey what can I say - such is the nature of a flashback.

TRAUMA FLASHBACK #2

As if that were not enough, I had to wear orthopedic shoes as a kid and my dad used to take me to some cobbler's shop down in the middle of nowhere, and the guy was sort of toad-like and on top of that, had oral cancer or something so he used to talk and breathe through a stoma. Here is a picture of a trach tube because any pictures I could find that even resembled this guy's stoma were just so soul-harming.

Anyway, my father did not even bother to warn me so I walked into the stoma cobbler situation completely cold. The whole experience was startling as a kid. As if it were not bad enough to have to wear blue suede reinforced steel saddle shoes.

That, coupled with the whole Margaret's Corset Shop experience, pretty much sealed my fate as a supernerd.

Sarah should kiss my (feet, ass, ring) for taking her to Target, I tell ya.

YOU PEOPLE SHOULD LISTEN TO ME

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

I can spot a trend a mile off. Read this, you naysayers.

http://adage.com/article?article_id=134080

MMMMMM. BROUP.

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Today we went to Panera Bread for dinner. We like it. It was named St. Louis Bread Company before, so, like, I'm supposed to eat there...

I think Panera Bread is a little on the feminine side. There are large wall posters that say BUTTER in a scripty french font and things like that. Don never can find anything substantial to eat there. They are always playing some jazz-like flowery crap on the sound system. Even the conversations are girly - today we voted on whether we felt our hair stylist would have a vaginal birth? or a c-section (everyone was unanimous on the vaginal birth BTW).

We girls always get the soup in bread bowls and love it. The best part is when you get down to the bottom of the bread bowl, some of the bread has dissolved into the soup and it's like you are eating bread completely saturated with soup. This is the part of the meal we call Broup (bready soup). Oh man. You just can't beat broup on a kind of damp cold evening.

(Note to self: get a life.)

BOYZ

Thursday, February 05, 2009

Last week was Crazy Hair Day at school. They have to announce Crazy Hair Day so that you know when the kids are purposefully messing with their hair, as opposed to just the everyday disastrous mess.

Anyway, Sarah decided not to do it. She couldn't find her scrunchies in time. No biggie. We entered campus and enjoyed all the fluorescent teased spiked masses stroll by.

As we approached Sarah's classroom, a boy with green and orange spiked hair came bounding up. I know this boy - he was in her class last year. He looks like a miniature version of Prince William.

"Sarah! Look! I got 3 colors in my hair!"

Sarah didn't even make eye contact. "Well... that's nice..." she said.

This boy just kept on yacking. I finally just kissed her on the head and went to work.

Later I said to Sarah, "I think that boy likes you."

She said, "No, he HATES me. He is constantly picking on me. For example, today I was thinking very hard and my brain got heavy and I had to put my head down. He totally made fun of me."

"Sarah. This is a boy. They don't even realize when their flies are down. And he's noticing your every move? Likes you."

Then today when I got home, ANOTHER boy called our house. To "get the homework assignments".

What the heck is going on here? Don't I have a few years before this starts happening?

HUMILIATION REQUIRED

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Hi there. Boy have I missed you guys! Work devoured January. Hopefully it will use February to digest. But it's not looking that way so far.

It's my favorite time of day. I'm wearing my matrioshka doll PJs and in bed with the laptop. Don is watching Jason Bourne beat up some Tunisian fella - one of them is going to need a chiropractor, I can tell you that much. The dogs are curled up in bed like little fuzzy bricks - somehow they get heavier when they're sleeping, I don't get it. Becca is in bed with a pile of books as big as she is and whenever she finishes one we hear a THUD as she tosses it onto the floor. Tonight she is reading everything from dinosaurs to bumble bees to wiggly teeth. Sarah is in her room reading a book on Egypt after doing every math problem on the face of the earth.

Sarah had middle school orientation today. For God's sake! She's 11. When did that happen, exactly?

One of the news items she was very excited to report is that PE is optional - you can be permanently excused from PE by proving you are in an organized sport outside of school for at least 200 minutes a week. Of course, our time at the ice arena every week more than qualifies...

"Because Mom! If you do PE, you like have to go into a locker room with aaaaallll the other girls at school, and CHANGE YOUR CLOTHES."

"Oh shock and alarm. You are kidding. They make you change in front of girls?"

"Really Mom, don't kid around, I am NOT going to want to do that."

"Sarah, you have to take PE. How else are you going to become self-conscious about your body? This is unacceptable. It's like they are taking a part of the whole middle school experience away from you!"

"Mom you aren't making any sense."

Well, perhaps not. But what is middle school good for, except gaining the knowledge that you are a pod-person, totally geeky and self-conscious and afraid that you might be stuck as a dork forever? PE is Ground Zero for all that. You have to change in front of other girls and you see their bodies and realize Nature is conspiring to change you all. You sweat and smell bad and wonder if your deodorant is going to hold up. You have smelly gym clothes and have to suffer humiliation if they fall out of your backpack. This is the stuff, I tell you!

"I think you just want me to be as humiliated as you were."

Yes I admit it. Humiliation gives you an edge. Everyone knows that to develop muscle, you have to have resistance. Otherwise you're just mushy. I say up with public school PE. It's almost as good as public speaking for building that awkward teenage character.