Dr. Strangemom (or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the blog)

See G Spot Run

What ever happened to the G-spot? Was it merely a passing fancy, a lark, the artichoke pesto of sexual pleasure? No one ever talks about it anymore.

Maybe it's been replaced by the new and improved H-spot. Or the low- carb G spot or something. Or HARRY'S LAW on Wednesday nights at 10.

Frankly, I'm happy to see it go. It was a lot of work. Rooting around looking for it, pretending to have found it, thinking up superlatives to describe it - I don't have time for that kind of nonsense. I have a job and kids. And a serious Facebook habit.

Anyway, I do not abide the whole "take responsibility for your own orgasm" movement. I have enough responsibility as it is, thank you very much, what with taking out the recycling and keeping up with tweezing. As far as I am concerned, responsibility for my orgasm was implied in the agreement Robin made almost 32 years ago when we invited 300 people for carrot cake and later returned all the La Creuset cookware they gave us so we could pay our rent and buy pot. I promised to make his lunch every day and he promised to do all the driving and always be wrong about everything. And then we went to Hawaii for a week.

And furthermore, if I am going to have to take responsibility for my own orgasm, then it's only fair that I get to delegate out some other responsibility to Robin, right? I mean, it's hardly like his "to do" list is full these days. For fuck's sake, the man fishes every weekend and plays twenty hours of online poker a day.

You know what? Let my orgasm take responsibility for its own damn self. If me and my G-spot are, say, walking around the mall and we see a beautiful, muscled man slowly eating a pomegranate, well, godspeed to my O, you know? It can do its thang all by itself. While I try on new Dansko clogs and get a Jamba Juice. Win win.

On the other hand, what if O goes all to hell and starts wigging out during, I don't know, silent meditation at Shabbat services. Oy. Can't take that kind of risk.

So, here's the deal:

I will take responsibility for my own orgasm. And Robin will keep up with the laundry.

Perfect. Because neither one of us is gonna do it.

 

 

 

In Which I Regret Not Sleeping With Andy and Freddy When I Had The Chance

You think YOU feel like a loser? You have no idea.

I am close personal friends with not one but two heroes.  Andy Lipkis (http://www.treepeople.org) and Freddy Mednick (http://teacherswithoutborders.org) are doing nothing less than saving the world every day. And, as you can imagine, this makes it very difficult to feel good about myself when, after hearing about their disease-resistant, union-run, eldercare, fat-free watershed project in Ethiopia or something (I have no idea), all I can add is that I spent Christmas break working on my abs. Which, of course, I didn't even.

Is close, personal proximity to greatness enough to get me into Heaven? I really should have slept with them when I had the chance forty years ago. Maybe they could have thrown me a karma bone. As far as I can recall, no one I ever slept with is now in a position to elevate my karmic, professional or financial station in life. God, I was so young and stupid.

Now Robin, however, once slept with a woman who we think is pretty wealthy now but I don't think she is going to give us any money because, well, she blocked our calls.

I am pretty much the good deeds version of being the fat girl hanging out with super models. Sadly, I am also pretty much the original version, as well. Odd man in, that's me.

I need to do something. Something meaningful. And I need to do it this weekend.  And it's already Sunday. Late afternoon Sunday. AND I want to watch MOB WIVES at 9, so there really isn't much time to get this together. Honestly, I have no idea how Andy and Freddy do it. Maybe they have TIVO so they can record MOB WIVES or something. Freddy and Andy have all the damn luck. I don't have TIVO so it really isn't fair.

So far, all I have is a list of all the broken shit on my stove that needs to be replaced. Well, not the whole list, exactly; I have a piece of paper right here and a pen that isn't leaking.

I also have a lot of meaningful ideas.

Okay, you got me. No I don't.

Fuck.

Wait! I DID do something meaningful today. Oh. Wait. No, I didn't. That was yesterday. And it wasn't meaningful. And I didn't do it.

Okay, I've got it! You know what I am going to do? I am going to get some less awesome friends.

Really fat ones.

Where I'm @

Now that we are out of Iraq, I can focus on the rest of the shit going wrong in America.

Specifically, how everyone is using the @ sign on keyboards. It will be our country's next downfall.

Granted, @ carries with it some interesting global factitude  (it's called "the snail" in French, "the strudel" in Hebrew, "the dog" in Russian, "the cat" in  Finnish and "the spider monkey" in German because I imagine that "the hook nosed money grubbing rabid infectious Jew dog" was too long to say in German) but a soupcon of interest isn't gonna save its ass from my crosshairs.

It just seems....I don't know, bullshit and entitled.... to type @ when all you have to do to type the actual word, "at", is add one fucking letter. In fact, if you count having to hit the "shift" button before hitting the "2", it is the same effort as writing "at". So using "@" isn't even a time-saver. It's such an American fat cat thing to do. Just tweaking shit just to make it different, to make it ours.  Spraying our stinky urine @ everyone. No wonder the terrorists hate us. I can barely look at us.

There is, however and happily, an antidote to our bullshit.  We can reduce our language footprint and regain our humility.

The antidote is eliminating "ness" from all words. Any child can do it.

I am a new convert to this revolution, having been recently inducted by my friend Elizabeth, who must be right because she was An English Major In College. (I, an ethnology of non western music and dance major in college, and a writer, stand in awe and reverence of English Majors In College so I capitalize Them whenever I see Them.)

Happiness. Restlessness. Horniness. The 'ness' is unnecessary; Elizabeth is right.  In fact, ness is actually quite annoying, as well, now that I see the light and have embraced the downsized, simple abundance, way of life. "Ness" is a leech, a slacker; it catches a free ride on the back of the truly hardworking words, leaving less room for words like "justice" and "solidarity" and "bite my fat ass, you hypocritical piece of shit, Newt Gringrich". "Ness" is the @ of words.  And Newt is the "ness" of the universe.

Ness is the obsequious friend that echoes everything you say and tries to make it his own statement. You know, you say to someone at a party, "Trini Lopez? He sang, 'Lemon Tree', right?" and the friend chimes in on the "opez" of "Lopez"  and vigorously agrees with the fact the he sang "Lemon Tree", like he was the one all along who said it.

Or, someone asks you about your major in college and when you answer, "Ethnology of Non-Western Music and Dance Performance", the friend says, "Oh, I was going to be an Ethnology of Non-Western Music And Dance Performance major, too, but I already knew everything about it."

And you silently scream, oh, shut the fuck up, you unnecessary passive repeater.

So let's just pitch it into the pile of useless shit with, I don't know, emoticons, St. John's Wort, Sara Lee bagels,  Moroccan Hair Oil, people who say "no problemo", scrapbookers, Nazi memorabilia collectors, suburban track mansion dwellers, the whole lot of those fucking Kardashians and all other superfluous ephemera that takes up space in the world.

Space that could be used for hating Newt, fighting Communism and storing all my Dansko clogs.

 

Targeting The Revolution

Don't despair, there is hope for the world.  I met her. She is two and a half years old, and we can expect  great things from her in the future.

The little girl, whom we will call The Little Girl, made her stand at Target last Wednesday. After an hour of "I want that!"  "No, we are not buying that today!"  "But I WANT THAT!"  what her parents wanted was  to leave the damn store. She, however, wanted to stay, finding a screaming match with her parents at Target on a rainy Wednesday afternoon to be a capital idea.

Negotiations proved unfruitful. Cajoling proved embarrassing (if you've ever had a two year old roll his eyes at your desperate high-pitched, smiley-faced declaration that it is FUN to leave the toy aisle at a store and SUPER FUN to get back into the car and go home for a nap - as I experienced many times with my kids - you know how embarrassing cajoling can be. Your kid looks at you with the same pity disgust that the salesgirls at Forever 21 look at me when I take a pair of size 6 jeans into the dressing room. No one is fooling anyone. My ass cannot Occupy those jeans.) Bribes were laughable. Threats were pathetic. Tension was palpable.

So, The Little Girl, taking her cue from Zuccotti Park, Rosa Parks and Trey Arrow, strapped herself into the cart. She Occupied that fucking cart.

Remember that moment, all of you parents out there, when the light comes into your child's eyes with the sudden realization that "you can't make me" is actually true? For me, that was the moment I discovered that my children were growing up. Also, that mixing alcohol and painkillers - for all of us - nicely takes the sting out of raising kids. Also, that there is a direct correlation between your kids defying you and the sudden loss of libido for your own husband. As well as the sudden desire to eat a large hot dog while doing naked jumping jacks in front of Armand Assante.

Where was I? Oh, Target. Right.

What happened next doesn't matter. Well, at least, not to me. It wasn't my kid, so the relevant part of the story is over. I imagine the parents worked it out. I will be at Target next week, however, and if they are still there I'll blog more about it.

What does matter, what the relevant part of the story is, is that we keep the spirit of unreasonable, contrarian protest alive. We are all way too compliant.

Okay, well, not all of us are too compliant. There are courageous people out there who are Occupying their corner of the world (shout-out to Karin Lightstone), refusing to be marginalized. And I suppose I could join them. But in my defense, so many of them are unattractive.

(PS to Karin: Bubbele, you are gorgous. So gorgeous that what the hell are you doing protesting in a park when you could totally bag yourself a rich man?)

But the middle aged woman without a brassiere? Occupy your boobs, honey. Occupy them right now.  With strong underwire.

In addition to being unattractive, the Occupiers misuse grammar on their placards, which is the real dealbreaker for me. I mean, for fuck's sake, WERE NOT GOING ANYWHERE is not gonna get you a ticket into my revolution. But add an apostrophe (and a sturdy bra) and maybe I'm listening.

Now, let's strap ourselves into our carts and get going.

 

 

 

 

 

Shit That Doesn't Count, part 2

There are certain things that I know for sure, too. Sister Oprah isn't the only one who can make that claim.

And here is one of the things I know for sure: in this world, some shit counts and some doesn't. It's not all fair and square in the universe.

Do you know what I mean? Like when the bagger at Safeway accidentally puts a party size bag of Cool Ranch Doritos in your bag instead of the bag of the person in front of you in line and you weren't planning to eat Cool Ranch Doritos, you'd never in a million years actually buy Cool Ranch Doritos, but there they are in your bag and the other person has already left the store - well, not so much left the store as that she has taken four steps towards the door - so, really, what else can you do but sit in your car in the parking lot and eat the entire bag?

You know, like that. You gotta surrender to the universe and eat the chips because They Were Meant To Be. And calories do not count if you didn't actually intend to buy the food you wound up eating.

Yes, it is so true. It's one of the immutable facts of life. Like, whatever you eat on an airplane doesn't count as calories. Unless it's during take-off or landing. Because of the altitude, I believe.

Or, eating two oversize bagels in the morning does not count as calories if you eat them only because you might have the nervous stomach runs later in the day when you have to go to the doctor to get that suspicious mole checked. Those bagels are proactive medicine. Ergo, no calories.

Or, if you are tasting food for, say, clinical research, you know, to correct the seasoning or decide if you want to eat an entire bowl of it, those calories do not count. 

And this immutable law is not just about calories, either.

Sex at Jewish summer camp in the mountains does not count as sex. A person re-virginizes upon re-entry to the city. Again, it has something to do with altitude. And getting the bends.

Also, sex with an old boyfriend does not count as cheating on a spouse. It's just, I don't know, like finishing up, but a lot of years later.

Conversely, sex with your spouse does count as sex even if you are asleep during the entire thing and dreaming that you are a Habitat For Humanity townhouse and Jimmy Carter is nailing your floorboards to your foundation.

Sex with your spouse also counts even if you fake your orgasm and you practice finger crocheting on his back hair during his orgasm.

And sex with your spouse while visiting the Jewish summer camp in the mountains where you lost your virginity will result in a great story later. Especially if your spouse threatens to take your old boyfriend to the exact spot where it happened, put your old boyfriend's nose in the spot, hit him on snout and say, "no! Bad!"

In parenting, there are a couple of "Don't Count"s that you may want to note:

Saying "motherfucker cocksucking goddamn me in a pile of shit" does not count as swearing in front of your kids if one of them ate the last Skinny Cow chocolate mint ice cream sandwich and all that's left are the gross peanut butter ones.

Telling your kid, "Your teacher sucks" doesn't count as bad parenting if his teacher did not let you cut in line in front of her the previous week to get tickets for James Taylor. Or if she can wear a belly shirt.

And,

Giving your kids Nyquil even though they haven't been sick in over a year, but you really need them to take a nap because Carrie Fisher is on The View and you want to see if she's gained the weight back yet, does not count as bad parenting. It's just good sense.

What does count, and I cannot stress this enough, is taking six and a half hours to finish a post on your blog when you told your husband that you had very very very important PAID work to do in your office today and he needs to totally clean the house, make dinner and leave you alone.