accidental feminist

I pulled a Homer! July 22, 2008

So, this past weekend the family watched “The Simpsons Movie”. The girls loved it, and can’t stop quoting it. I became obsessed with “Spider Pig”. So imagine my glee when I saw that Dina had a little red plastic piggy bank in her room!

“Kids! Look at me! Look at me!” I shouted from the top of the kitchen counter as I slid the pig along the ceiling.

“What are you doing?” Bassie asked?

“Ohhh!!! Spider Pig! That’s funny!” Dina laughed. “Let me try!”

So they did. Then Bassie handed the pig back to me. “Uh, Mommy…” she said, pointing at the top of the kitchen wall.

Spider Pig had left little red marks all along the wall, like a good little Spider Pig. They came out with some mildly abrasive cleanser, but my embarrassment at doing precisely what Homer did will be harder to scrub away.

apple and tree (or, awesome things my daughter and I said within an hour of each other) June 25, 2008

Bassie, on why she can’t climb across a particularly precarious section of playground equipment: “I need more gravity”. (p.s. this is how I will hitherto forward refer to weight in any context, e.g. “I have so much more gravity after eating that entire French Silk Pie!”

Me, to yosefblog, on why I have the right to talk about something disgusting (in this case, a character Dina invented called “Dr. Gross”, who removes people’s body parts and various bodily fluids and eats them) in a crowded line at Wendy’s: “They don’t pay me not to talk about it!”

…and I’m the crazy one. June 18, 2008

So I need to go to the bathroom at the Jewel. I walk down the little corridor to the bathroom door. I find the usual cart full of restocks in front of the bathroom door, as well as the sound of a fan coming from the bathroom.

Hmm, I think, that may likely indicate that a person is inside blow drying her hands. But it may also simply be the fan that accompanies the light. And since I desperately need to relieve myself, I will attempt to see for myself. The worst that could happen is the person in the bathroom will experience the mild irritation of the locked doorknob jiggling, and the best is that I get to pee faster.

So I turn the knob. And the door opens.

And I find an elderly woman standing at the blower. Damn it! Got the bullet that time. And yet, I think, she is finishing drying her hands, so perhaps this is perfect timing; Maybe she had unlocked the door, realized that she wanted to more fully dry her hands, and set back to the dryer with the door unlocked as I found it. I shall hold the door open momentarily, then, which may work to our mutual benefit. She will not have to open the door upon leaving, and I will get to pee faster.

But it is not to be…

“Close the door!” she shouts, pushing it shut. I then stand there outside the bathroom while she, out of spite, waits for the blower to stop, hold 1…2…3…and sets it whirring again. After the completed second cycle of the blower, she emerges.

And she takes her cart and starts to leave.

Wait! That’s her cart? That cart filled with three boxes of sudafed, four jars of concord grape jelly, six boxes of jello brand key lime pie filling, eighteen pairs of tube socks…? That’s not a restock cart!?

At this point, any thoughts of even broaching the topic of her neglecting to lock a public bathroom door, thereby making me feel like I had done something wrong have all but left my head. Let her go, Rachel. She’s not worth it, I tell myself. So I watch her start to walk away. And then…

She turns back for a moment, eyes me suspiciously and mutters “…just held the door open like that…” and shuffles away.

I am tempted to shout back to her, to call her out on her unlocked door that started it all, to tell her that it was she, and not me, who has broken the rules of propriety, but I realize that this retort would have a “you can’t fire me, I quit” quality to it, and even if no one is there to hear it, it seems undignified and foolish.

So, you have bested me this time, batty old hag. But I will return. And someday, I will open that unlocked door and see you taking a dump, and I will hold that door open and watch…and I, I will have the last laugh.

co-ed sleepover June 10, 2008

I don’t think I’ve had one since Prom, but I had one Friday night. Or rather, it was called a “sleepover”, but really we all just hung out until 5:30 in the morning, then half of us passed out and the other half cleaned up and went home. Conclusion:

Positives– Any sexual tension has already been put on the table and diffused well before the event because, for God’s sake, we’re all adults here; no concerns that we will be “caught drinking”; people clean up after themselves

Negatives– No awkward sexual tension; no adrenaline rush out of fear of being caught drinking; no parents to clean up after us.

yb (who is sitting next to me as I post this; or did I just break the fourth wall!?) suggests there should be a different word for such an “adult sleepover”; sort of like how Bassie and her friends have “sleepunders”, where they all hang out in pajamas from 6-8 PM, and then go home.

Any suggestions?

the yosefblog abides May 8, 2008

The 45 second walk from your hall duty in the A building to your Department Coordinator’s office in the C Building is the longest 45 seconds of your life iff (that is spelled correctly, for those who don’t know elementary logic) you are greeted by said Coordinator with the words: “Your father is on the phone; it’s about Yosef”. The thoughts went like this:

1. He is dead.
2. You are melodramatic and have a hyperactive and highly literary imagination.
3. Therefore, it is unlikely that he is dead.
4. But he probably got in a car crash and is in a coma.

Or, option 5, he inexplicably fainted on the el platform. He is fine, and decidedly not dead. But he cannot drive for at least two weeks, which makes him “dead weight” (no? too soon?).

In all sincerity, though, the thoughts go through your head so quickly, and one of the ones that was nearly half formulated and only barely coherent, like a dull headache coming on, was this: This person is my perfect match (although I have always wanted us to create profiles on eharmony and see if it matches us up, just to verify this suspicion with 29 scientifically proven points of compatibility), and he could be gone, and I am but a wee lass of 30; how could I possibly “start over”? How could I replicate that? Could the universe be so indifferent to my desires (Werner Herzog would say “yes, neccessarily”)? Only now, as I have more than 45 seconds to consider this thought, do I realize that there are so many people in the world, as sure of the “perfection” of their relationships, that have had that person taken from them in an instant. It is terrifying and comforting to know that the human brain is adaptable enough that such an event will most likely not kill you, the survivor, and that you will, in fact, find a way to move on. But for those few seconds when I actually thought my life might actually turn out like that, I was weighed down by that possibility, and the realness it had in those moments before I picked up that phone.

Now, anyone want to drive my gimp husband around for the next two weeks?

what not to watch April 25, 2008

Evanston Athletic Club has, like any respectable athletic club, televisions mounted to the front of their cardio machines. Although their lack of a DVR that would allow me to watch my choice of programming is a serious design flaw, they do have cable, and I can usually find something to watch for 45 minutes. In fact, I’ve developed a playlist of sorts of “work out” shows, i.e. shows that I would never choose to waste my time watching at home, but that somehow become incredibly appealing once I’m stuck on an ellipital machine. Ooh. Ooh. Is this the season where Chandler and Monica are married? Hmmm…they really do look “Ten Years Younger”! Oh, Chris Matthews, you’re so happy with yourself!

I have learned, however, that there are certain things you cannot watch while working out:
1. “The Godfather”- depressing tragic hero + bloody ass kicking + increased heart rate + vague smell of someone else’s sweat = nausea.

2. Anything on “E!”*- schadenfreude + public embarassment when the person next to you sees that you’re watching it + the strong stench of the guy next to you ripping a big one = nausea

*Note: You may be able to get away with watching “The Soup” because “Hey, I’m mocking this vapid, celebrity-worshipping culture! Really!”

3. HGTV - Actually, there’s never really a reason to watch HGTV. “Whoa! That guy built his house in the shape of a Smurf mushroom cottage! That’s weird…I’m bored…”

a second in what appears to be a series of suburban mother rants April 15, 2008

Um, okay. How do I explain this? When you make my latte without foam, and I get up the nerve to point this out to you, which is very out of character for me and I hate doing, but which my friend who works at Starbucks has encouraged me to to in order to provide proper feedback to baristas regarding their milk foaming abilities, and you fix the problem by taking that very same non-foamed latte and scooping some foam onto it from some unrelated metal “milk foaming” pitcher you are not fixing the problem. (If, however, you are placing foam from the very pitcher in which you foamed my milk in the first place, I may be more lenient; but I’m not happy).

My Starbucks employee friend can back me on this: hot, unfoamed milk and hot, foamed milk taste different.

Now, you’ll have to excuse me. I’m late to my daughter’s soccer practice and I still have to pick up the Capri Sun for the team snack. Good thing I have this mini-van to fit them all!

certain notes on the use of reusable shopping bags April 14, 2008

First of all, let it be known that I am not an active environmentalist. I don’t compost; I don’t go out of my way to recycle the glass that my landlord refuses to put in our regular recycling; I don’t take fast showers. But I am an environmental pragmatist. If aiding the environment is made into an economically beneficial option (and here I use “economically in a broad sense of exchange, and not just monetarily), then I will do it. It’s why I sent the cover of my recent Newsweek, filled with Target bags, to Tercycle. And it seems I am not alone, since it is clear that the reusable shopping bag has recently reached a tipping point. And I am on the bandwagon.

(Sit tight; that was just the prologue…)

So I go shopping at the big mega-Jewel on Howard tonight, since I have to fill several prescriptions there. I usually shop at the much smaller but well-stocked Dominick’s on Green Bay, but, things as they are…

So I get to the check out and proudly lay my reusable shopping bags on the conveyor belt. Things seem to be going fine, although the bagger is skimping on the bag-filling a bit. I reach over to help her load some light cereal boxes on top of the meat. Now, I’m feeling a little micro-managey at this point, so I back off. What happens next I would not believe but that I witnessed it myself. After half filling two of my three enormous bags, she leaves the third next to her and begins double plastic bagging the rest of the items. She used an entire bag for one matza box. Another for a package of chicken. And the kicker, she bags my freaking 12 roll toilet paper package. That thing barely even fits in a bag.

At this point, dear reader, I assume you are asking: Why would this dumb-shit bagger (and I’m not saying all of them are) use even more plastic bags than is normal for a person who has brought her own reusable bags? Alas, I cannot answer this question; but I can finish my epic tale…

Now I notice the unused bag, and remark as such to my foolish bagger. She smiles a sheepish grin, opens the bag, and proceeds to place the already half-filled plastic bags into my bag. I am dumbstuck, nay, awestruck, at her complete obliviousness. Rather than trying to stop her, I wait patiently until she is done, then move myself and my cart to the side, dump all of the contents of the plastic bags into my bag, and shove all of the plastic bags into the bagging station of the register next to mine. “Take your god damn bags!” I cry in my head. Then I turn and smile at the bagger, thank her, and head out into the cool night air.

“isn’t that something that old people get?” April 11, 2008

A thirty year old woman should not approach a colonoscopy like one approaches a yearly teeth cleaning. Next thing you know, It’ll be all “Doesn’t everyone have an enlarged prostate?” and “Time for my monthly blood letting…”

happy birthday, dina. April 6, 2008

My good friend recently wrote a very insightful post about bratz, and, shocked as I am to be disagreeing with her, I’m going to have to go out on a limb on this one and say that…

those things are f-ing vile! Are they 21 year old hookers? 8 year old nymphets? 90 year old plastic surgery addicts? They are awful! Awful! Awful!

So when Dina got this for her birthday today, I was beside myself.

“But I looooove it Mommy!”

Yes, and it’s Mommy’s job, just sometimes, to save you from yourself.

I’m all for positive body image. I’m all for being open with children about sexuality. And yet, and yet…I envision the next line of bratz dolls: Polly Porn Star! Comes with wax strips and asshole bleaching kit.

Was that shocking to some of you? Now you know how I feel…