Pour Yourselves a Drinks, Folks. Cuz We're Going to Talk About Pubic Hair and Power.

i'm going through this major personal change right now. it's (terrible) exciting and i'm (completely worried) thrilled to see how i will turn out at the end of it. 

i'm trying to empower myself and figure out the ways in which i shrink from my full, emboldened self. i know it sounds like a Cathy cartoon where i just end up eating ice cream out of the carton in high shorts. i hope it's not. 

one of the first things i find, as i look under the middle school rocks and behind the fear files, is this complicated theme of how my being female impacts my identity. how my perception of what it is to be female, what it is to be feminine, how society now and through time has looked at females, impacts how i see myself. 

uf, right?

what does it mean to live in a female body? to have a female voice?

doing my research of reading, listening, living and observing the world and my/women's place in it- there are days i want to give up and sit down and be quiet. and i think even now, here, there is a strong, persuasive argument that it's best if women just do that. that my voice should be meek or apologetic or quick to demure to stronger voices around me. 

there's also a strong impression that my sex, my parts, my body, my 'honeypot' is the most valued or important part of being female. (did she just say honeypot? gross). but 'valued' isn't really the right word. neither is 'important.' those words signify a characteristic that will have an effect on success, survival or well-being. the 'value' placed on my parts by the world is by it, not by me. my value in them is rarely discussed. 

like shakira said, i like my shapely legs because they help me run fast. i like my breasts because they helped me feed my kids and also because they hold up my shirt in a cool way. i like my GI tract because it is very efficient. i like my pale blue eyes because they are lovely and sometimes they freak people out. i think sometimes people assume i'm a sorceress and i am WAY ok with that. 

it's easier for me to tackle the things i think are more mind over matter. the issues of feeling unsafe/threatened/despised simply because i am female and acknowledging that there are (a lot) of people in the world who are looking to assault or omit me on those grounds- i don't know what to do about it except be sort of jumpy and paranoid and mad. and i can easily get bogged down by the inequality in the world against women and feel like it's a lost fight before we start. 

but. i'm doing what i can, in my head, twisting how i view me. i'm planning on 'owning' my female body and my voice and not letting them get owned by others. in really, really tiny baby steps. prepare to be not impressed at all. 

i suspect that our conditioning to believe that we never look pretty, thin, princessy, enough is a great tactic to slow us down and keep us worried about all the wrong things. i have always assumed Cosmo magazine is written by men who are threatened by what women could do if they had time to stop worrying about new pubic hair removal systems or men's orgasms. 

sorry. i should have started this whole thing with, pour yourselves a drinks, folks, cuz we're going to talk about blow jobs and pubic hair. but not, in, like, a fun way. so you'll actually really need that drink.  

i'm still doing things to my body that are expensive and time-consuming, uncomfortable, and possibly even toxic, because they are socially expected for females (and not males). i spend time and money unnecessarily removing my mammalian body hair,  i wear long, inconvenient head hair, i do lots of skin treatments, i wear makeup, i keep my eyebrows (mostly) separate. but i've gotten to the point where i refuse to wear uncomfortable clothes. i won't dye my hair and plan to stick to that when i go gray/white because jamie lee curtis and gloria steinem and helen mirren told me to. i don't cry over my gut that i have as a 35 y/o mammal who's unloaded two human childrens out of her body. i certainly won't complain about it in front of my kids. 

i'm excited for my wrinkles because they're in the places where my face folds when i'm thinking hard or listening empathetically. they show my time, my wisdom, maybe. they make me seem more legitimate, perhaps. there's inherent added weight and dignity to aging because we learn some things over their years.....men, historically get this privleged status and older women not so much. i assume it's because there's SUCH a cultural focus on young female bodies, that old female bodies and their owners are seen as less good. 

absolutely fuck that. old women can be brilliant and powerful and don't have to care about the stupid stuff anymore. what a relief it must be. i'm getting there. 35 years old now. come on, 70! 

(i will fart so much and not care).

it's not about being like men. it's about being like men in that we have respect and power without having to fight for it or shrink from it. our bodies are not what make us good or bad. 

and our bodies are not just baby incubators. that's another way that i've found some freedom and power. it was very cool what all my body could do while carrying and delivering my kids. amazingly cool. i'm so grateful. but now that i'm done with that use for my body, i don't want to deal with it anymore. i've got shit to do. so, i don't have periods and i don't have to worry about pregnancy any more because of my progesterony IUD (intrauterine device for contraception). it's not for everyone, not everyone has those results, etc, etc. but for me--i have visions of a 6' tall version of it and i holding hands and skipping through sunny fields together. i want to mouth kiss the scientists who came up with this gorgeous little T sitting in my uterus. seriously. mouth kiss. this has been the great equalizer. for the first time in my life, i can live my whole month without blood coming out of any part of me and without thinking about birth control. just like men have, for their whole lives. that's kind of huge. 

so much more could be said about our lady parts. but you're probably already 3 drinks in and i don't want to lose you completely yet. i'll get there in a later post (ooh. can't wait. will you talk about endometrial lining more, please? it's so so fun)

anyway.  i try to maintain that my mind, spirit, personality is way more valuable than my body/face/shiny shiny hair or reproductive organs.

if we women are not busy depilitizing our body hair (that's a word, shut up. who's writing this? not you) and decorating ourselves and we're putting the rest of our person forward first, how much more can we accomplish? and how much less will we feel invisible or imperfect or used if we're standing in judgement for our ethics, our humor, our intellect instead of our skin suit? 

and people will judge me for how i look, but i don't have to care. that's hard but real. 

for people to know the other stuff about me- that i'm kind, funny, smart, etc...is that i talk. i talk and i talk and i talk and i write. and i stop apologizing or wincing at having the floor or being trusted for my input. and that's hard. it's not instinctive. i do the whole, "well, it's just my opinion, but..." and shrink from eye contact less than i used to, but it's still there. i'm working on it.

i've typed all kinds of retractions and caveats along this post that i've then deleted. i don't want to step on toes, but i also don't want to be afraid to put my foot down. you know? 

one last thing before i go pluck my eyebrows and cry over white wine...we're all trying. these are the things i've figured out so far. i have great days where i feel like i'm discovering new things about myself, taking great risks, being very brave. and then i have days where i feel small and hopeless and old and fat and like any change i make is either going to inconvenience/freak someone out, or it's never going to be enough. 

i just want to keep on.  i hope you're doing your own thing to make yourself a little braver and fiercer and better able to identify who the voice in your head is, telling you what's good/bad about you. is it yours yet? or is it 'the world's' or an ex's or a parent's or...whomever. i'm, like, 60/40 in favor of mine now, and it feels AMAZING. and i'll take suggestions if you've come up with something really good. 

smooches. 

And This is Why I have 7 Mustards and No Toilet Paper

i have all these blog posts in the works about big topics like 'what it is to be female' and more personal reflections on sex relations and my place on the planet, as a woman, and respect and power and....

....my life gets in the way of me finishing a thought.

and then tonight i made this cocktail with, like, whiskey and bitters and orange juice and all my smartin' is off the rails.

so, fucket. for now i'm just dealing with the fact that the work-mom complex is all i did today and that i'll try to find time for creative dissection tomorrow.

i took the children to the market tonight after i picked them up from daycare after work.

(it was a grocery store, but sometimes i like to pretend i'm in old english novel).

so, we went to the market and i giveth the children some fruit roll-ups straight from the not-yet paid for packaging to try to keep them contenteth whilst we shopped.

it worked very temporarily and then anna kept screaming. she screams that scream that sounds like a tea kettle is being axe murdered in an abandoned cabin in the woods and for some reason a car alarm is also going off nearby. and they're both asking for everything they see. like they haven't eaten in a month and simply can't live without...those 2-day old discount cinnamon rolls, or whatever. not that i blame them on that one because they probably are perfect sad food.

fellow shoppers look toward me with flinching, disappointed faces, and then pretend they don't see my distress. i'm never sure if strangers think i'm under or over-reacting. i'm a messy combination of bribes, threats, and twitching.

it's not great.

i had a grocery list when i got there. at least i think i had a list. i've no idea. one of them may have eaten it. all's i know is that when i got home, we had something like 47 different kinds of pretzels, multiple chocolate bars, and every snack-sized applesauce on the market in the bags. i think i must have gone into a fugue state. by the end of it, they could have yelled at me to put the cashier lady in the trunk and i would have loaded her into the honda feet-first.

sigh. this HAS to get better eventually. they won't always be this shrill and demanding (and delightful, and sweet, and tiny and cute, i know, i KNOW), right?

meanstwhile i need an applesauce pretzel cake recipe.

i'd eat that. i'd eat the whole thing in one long sad shoveling motion. my tears moistening it like the hotdog contest eaters with the buns.

ah, shit. i forgot hotdog buns.

Top Five Most Romantic Souvenirs Brought Back From a Business Trip (Not Herpes)

in the movie "high fidelity," one of robb and my desert-island all-time top 5 favorite films, the john cusack character says about relationships that connection is about WHAT you like, not what YOU'RE like. the interests you share matter. 

thirteen years into marriage, with two small kids, a mortgage, jobs, and recently a lot of time away from each other for job travel,  i would say that this truth is even more truthy. 

i mean, how rare is it to be able to have a good conversation on something you're really into? it shouldn't be, i know, but at this point in adult life, there's so much zombie-walking through the processes of the day that we don't often get (take?) the chance to talk passionately about things that spark our imagination and tease our brain. it's like good candy. conversation candy. 

robb was gone for a week with one business venture and when he came home, he had finished reading a book that i had just read ('franny and zoe' by j.d salinger). so we got to talk about it. and it was especially awesome because it's a thought-provoking book, but no one i knew had read it recently enough to be able to really discuss it in any depth, so i was stuck talking to wikipedia and book reviewers about it. and they don't care what i think at all. so that he could share that with me was this huge surprise gift. it felt like these really personal flowers, opened just to what was on my mind. 

and THEN after being home for about 24 hours, he left for a second week for his other job...and when he got back from that trip, he had finished reading 'the great gatsby by f. scott fitzgerald,' a book with which i have been in a relationship for many years. we recently watched the baz luhrmann version of the movie, which i also enjoy. he wanted to compare and contrast the representation of the characters and the plot in the movie and the book. i almost pooped myself with joy. 

this might sound simple, but it shouldn't. i cannot emphasize enough how romanced i felt by him getting interested in the things that i'm into and wanting to talk about things other than the minutiae of running our house and businesses and trying not to get run over by our kids. he didn't necessarily do it for me, but the fact that our pleasurable/intellectual pursuits are crossing and creating lively, fun conversation- it feels like old times. good times. it feels like romance. 

when you're partners in life, you have all sorts of things 'in common,' right? i mean you have exactly the same children and debt and neighbor issues and house messes in common. and you talk about those things, but it's the new discoveries, the creative braining that is often lost after dating has stopped. it's flattering and shocking to have him show genuine interest in my ideas.  

we're also watching classic movies together. and talking about them. jimmy stewart and grace kelly in 'rear window' is on tonight ("wives don't nag anymore. they 'discuss' ") 

gotta go. i'm on a date. with my husband. 

Happy International Women's Day! We Should Celebrate with a Piñata Filled with Tampons Because That Would Be Fun AND Useful. Felicidades.

it was international women's day this week. apparently it's a paid national holiday in a bunch of countries. 

hahahahahaha. 

sigh. 

i find it hard to feel optimistic about how women's rights are evolving or even indignant about the ways in which women still aren't treated fairly, equally, or humanly, in the world today. i tend to feel discouraged and sad instead. just sick, ashamed, maybe, and sad. it's especially easy to feel disheartened right now with the masochistic tidal wave rising in american politics. i hope there's a lot of strong people reaching out to keep us from being pulled under.  

i'm trying to.... ('sack up' is the coloquialismi i would normally use here, but as it's in reference to male genitalia, and i possess female genitalia, i'll try something different instead)....i'm trying to 'ovary stomp' here and instead of just folding to my broken heart over how things are, i am aiming to be one of the strong arms lifting people up out of the water. i feel like there must be ways i can improve how women are viewed/promoted/respected in my home, my work, my community, my state, my country...maybe even my world.  

i want to keep establishing and reminding that women have identities outside of the prettiness of our faces, the sexual appreciation of our bodies, the ripeness/emptyness of our wombs....and also outside of who needs us/loves us/uses us. we are more than our bodies and our utility to others. it might sound simple and stupid, but i think we're still stuck there at this time, in this world. 

i think it's helpful to keep talking about the normal realities of being a woman. there's so much to say, and i'll keep trying to word good about it. maybe if we can normalize and neutralize all the things that make us different than the men who traditionally make the rules and narrate the story, we'll gain some ground?   

so, i'm thinking about menstruation this week. if you don't want to talk uterine blood, just flip back to whatever news or gossip you were reading before you started this post. but frankly, it was probably about megyn kelly or planned parenthood, since this is what's on the country's mind now, too.  so you may as well stay here, because you can't get away from it anyway.

i keep an 'informative' blog for my work in women's health where i actually provide authentic clinical data and (shudder) 'facts' about 'things.' (it's exhausting not just talking out of my ass like i do here). the topic i covered recently was "normal" menstruation- length of cycle, amount of bleeding, amount of pain, etc. know what's normal so you can know if yours is abnormal, right?

but it's one of those topics that is a little uncomfortable for people, so i tried to find some funny quotes or clips to include. i came up with about a million euphemisms (Your period. The Red Menace. The Crimson Tide. Shark Week. On Your Moon. Being On the Rag. The Red Dot Special. Your Course. Aunt Flo. The Curse. The Monthly Gift.  The Monthly Bill. Your Time of the Month. A Friend Coming to Visit, etc) but otherwise there wasn't much in the way of funny material on the subject. 

almost all the jokes and memes about periods are about how bitchy and terrible women get for a week a month and how they can't/won't have the intercourses during their "moon time."

and that lack of good jokes at the expense of menstruation pisses me off  because i think that the more we talk and joke about our own stuff, the more we own and accept it as part of life. so the fact that all the funny out there is kind of written from the perspective of how MEN have to suffer through women's menses is not so great.

there's still this generally accepted idea that menstruation is dirty, scary,  embarrassing,  shameful and uncontrollable. and that since it is something women experience (and not men) for a quarter of their months for half of their lives, somehow that makes women dirty, embarrassing, shameful and out of control.

i've written on this topic before. and there's actually a lot in the news right now about how tampons/pads should not be taxed and about how women in third world countries and other places with less privilege are greatly negatively impacted by the lack of resources to keep clean during menstruation. it's an example of how women are kept different and distanced by the normal functions of our bodies. it's not a thing we all deal with in society, it's a 'women's issue.' i call bullshit. 

gloria steinen wrote an essay in 1978 "if men could menstruate' which you can find here: http://www.mylittleredbook.net/imcm_orig.pdf. 

recently, the idea was taken a step further, and with funny videos, here: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/28/what-if-men-had-periods. 

(i still don't have a real computer and so am limping by using an app- sorry i'm not providing easy hyperlinks to these articles, please do copy/paste, i promise they're worth it)

it does make you think. what about menses is so awful? it's just part of biology for half the population. is our negative impression of it because of the half of the population that it impacts? hashtag lame and unacceptable. 

we have to check our premises. so much of what we understand about how things work is based on assumptions that may be biased-based constructs in the first place. 

hmmm. 

i'm going to start working on a series of knock knock jokes about feminine hygiene products. you're welcome, universe. (no, but srsly, if you have ideas, please help. it's harder than it seems)

happy international women's day. let's keep swimming. 

What I Like About Yoga, A Personal Essay; or, I Did Not Make That Smell, It Was That Guy in the Back There.

i do it with my eyes closed and the same things that feel the greatest also hurt the worst. but i'm sort of a sucker for working through pain. feels worthwhile. and i like that it's hard but that i'm in total control of how far i push it. and only accountable to me. 

i genuinely don't care how well the people around me are doing other than to cheat off them to figure out where the fuck my left arm is supposed to be in this pose. (there?? how is that possible? that is not possible. child's pose it is). my shoulders and jaw relaxes like they never otherwise do and my mind sort of wakes up but also quiets down- like  the normal buzzing garbage just sits down for once and the cool shadow creatures come out to show me what they've been up to. the new hat they bought. 

that's terribly poetic. or just terribly terrible, isn't it? <-- that self editing doesn't happen during yoga. during yoga i let my mind wander to all the extents of my ideas. i don't clamp down on imaginationing like i do in real life. everything seems brilliant and possible. i don't worry that all the thoughts have been thought and thought BETTER and thought first. i don't worry that i couldn't possibly be as clever or funny or unique or thoughtful or wise as....whomever. i'm just happy with the shadow people inside my head. 

also, even though my yoga studio is full of THE WORST WHITE PEOPLE (ie: my tribe) talking about their disgust at water bottles and this amahzing new vegan energy bar they just tried (no, i mean, seriously. these are EXACTLY my people. and if i get there more than 2 minutes before class starts, i wait in my car so i don't have to hear them talk in the lobby. because they are just terrible. side note to my aside- i was listening to a podcast that i love (Another Round-http://www.buzzfeed.com/anotherround), hosted by two hilarious and genius women of color, and they were talking about how annoying it is to hear white people make fun of white people stuff because really there's no teeth to it and it all rolls back into a self-satisfied pseudo compliment on how cozy and preferred we are....and i get that. but for real, these yoga douchebags are just terrible). where was i? yes. i really love this place. 

it's on the main street of my town and it's above a coney island restaurant. you have to climb up the metal fire escape stairs to get there, which makes me feel so urban and cool. like i live on Avenue Q or something. and you must know what a coney island is...it's hot dogs covered in lumpless chili and french fries BUT ALSO pancakes and delicious terrible hot chocolate and pie and greek salad. 

so there's this big neon CONEY ISLAND sign immediately outside the windows of the yoga studio. it blinks in a rhythm that i think is just slightly out of step, in a specific arrythmia. so inside the studio, the fake candles are burning and the music is Enya-ing in this sacred womb of a room and outside, a blinking reminder of french fries. it works for me. it keeps things more earthy or something. plus i like the teachers and the variety and blahblahblah. 

yoga is one of my ways of finding some happy alone time with no one needing me. doing something healthy and stimulating and relaxing. i have this dream of a costa rican yoga retreat some day where the surf sounds are real and not on a white noise CD. but i want a few years of practice. and also before i go i'm gonna need some tribal tattoos and a few more friends named Taylor. 

Turns Out Kindergarten Roundup Involves No Lassos, Horses, or Even Cookies #Lame

henry and all the other half pints got rounded up for kindergarten last night. we saw the school, met the teachers and principle, and learned all about their learning models and such. the kindergarten teachers seem to be young and kindly and enthusiastic and, i suspect, sort of insane. you'd have to be to make that work.  

rookie mistake, we took henry with us. fortunately, the meeting was held in the library, so he could mostly entertain himself. every once in a while, he'd come up from a book and whisper loudly, YOU GUYS, I'M BORED. CAN WE LEAVE YET? 

lesson: don't take the kids. they don't care about how hardcore your common core is. 

so, anyway. we prepare for kindergarten. big transition, etc, etc. i'm not crying. i mean, saying "i'm not crying" sort of makes it sound like i'm DEFINITELY crying, but i'm actually not. 

i'm feeling less grief over how his blossoming independence impacts me and more excitement for him. he's got that big brain under the floppy hair and i want to see it grow. for him to be able to read on his own and gain bigger control of his emotions as we (mostly) do with practice and time. to make more friends, so have goals and projects and plans. he's just henry'd so well so far, i can't wait to see what comes next. 

there's, of course, more opportunities for hurt and there are always things to fear as his world gets bigger...but we'll try to be brave together and go slowly. 

the other day, he asked me why i turned one way instead of another while i was driving. i started talking about how driving is a constant stream of decisions you have to make: how fast you'll go, what direction you'll take, whether you'll stop for the yellow light, (whether you'll emote with your hands or say words your kids oughtn't hear if someone cuts you off. sumbitch in the Prius, you know who you are). and to be able to make that many decisions, you have to have the skill to assess situations and make good choices w/ the information you have. and that takes practice. 

of course, driving is just an example. every interraction in every relationship is a series of choices. every day, work demands you make a series of choices. every trip to the grocery stores is a (very difficult) series of choices. 

he's getting there. one day at a time. i think kindergarten is an opportunity for lots of practice at making good choices. 

after i totally blabbered for about 5 minutes on all this growth and change and such, he was like, I JUST WANTED TO KNOW WHY YOU WENT THE WRONG WAY TO KARATE CLASS?? 

"She's Brave, Man." Anna Turns Two.

anna bananapants turned 2 years old this week. 

 

we had the best birthday week. we had a Little Mermaid themed party for her at her grandparents' house when we could get all the families together (she was happy, but a little put-out that the decorations featured stupid Ariel and not Ursula, her favorite character). 

then for her actual birthday day, we took her to an indoor adventure center thing and then later that night out again with some good friends to a hip restaurant (bar. it was a bar. just own it) where she got to again hang with her favorite people and eat both french fries AND pizza. 

what is this amazing goofball like at age 2? well...

this weekend in swim class her swimming instructor kept shaking his head while she repeatedly turned herself around and let her body float out into the abyss of the pool and away from the safety of the steps where here little friends were. even after several synus-filling plunges. 'she's brave, man,' he said. she could give two hoots about what is safe or easy or what everybody else is doing. 

as young as she is, i've heard A LOT that she will one day be some sort of executive (and then they usually whisper in an aside, or in jail for racketeering). she knows what she wants and is fearless in its pursuit. and she really, REALLY likes villains. we continue to make jokes about building her an evil lair in the basement. with beanbag chairs, of course. 

facetiming her grandparents. 

at age two, she has quick smiles and a defiant chin, a stocky little body and cheeks that are like a ripe nectarine filled with the best kind of jello, she's a trip. when i think about her, i find myself also grinning and shaking my head.

i've been saying since she was tiny that, with her, i'm just sort of along for the ride. i say that with more excitement and respect and less panic than i did earlier in her life. she's sharp and driven and i also suspect might brain her way into some pretty cool stuff.  i'm pretty happy to be on that ride. i also kind of want to be her when i grow up. i pray she stays this sure-footed. 

driving grandma in a jeep at an adventure center. 

she has a lot of words and uses them all the time. she shocks us with her full sentences and her deliberate practice of those words she's not quite getting right. you can tell it bugs her and she's trying to fix it. it's kind of amazing. she won't be dismissed. 

she does everything with passion and authority. she has one of the greatest laughs in the history of laughs. she is clever and mischevious. it's a daily thing to hear her maniacally laughing and racing across the house away from our commands....usually pantsless. 

she's very loving. especially toward henry. she tells us 'i love you, daddy. i love you, mommy. i love you, henry.' while she says most things loudly (SO LOUDLY), those words of affection she drops quietly on us, almost shyly. maybe she's afraid anyone will hear and think she's soft. 

everyone keeps going, "ugh, 2 year-olds. emiright??" but in her case, actually, i'm excited for this next phase. she's been sort of 2-ing for a while with the feisty sassy stuff and things are getting a little easier now that she has words that we can mostly understand. i'm sure she has a whole other level of beast mode to reveal to us as she angles for more and more independence, but she's already getting less violent and more reasonable than she was 6 months ago. i write this and consider whether i should addend it to include how she drew blood from robb's finger just last week. no, i still think, overall, there is less screaming and less blood and more reasonable conversations and fun and peace than there has been. i'm anxious to see how 2 looks on her. so far so good.