What to Exect When You're Socially Awkward

Last week I was trolling through some of the blogs that I follow and I noticed that Beta Dad had some kind of contest going on.  I'm embarrassingly noncompetitive so I normally just skim over those things but this one caught my eye.

From what I understand, the folks who publish the What To Expect When You're Expecting books contacted Beta Dad and asked him to write a review/endorsement of their books and in exchange they would provide him with several copies to give away to his readers.

Beta Dad turned it into a contest where his readers could share their embarrassing sex ed stories and his wife would choose her 12 favorites to receive one of the books.  Since my life is pretty much one long embarrassing sex ed story after another, I had a couple of things to share.

Oddly enough, I won a book.  I don't have much of a need for it at this point in my life, but I will pass it along to one of my pregnant friends.  Since Jayson had a vasectomy about 10 years ago, if I ended up pregnant now, the book I would need would be What To Expect When You're in Divorce Court.

Tomorrow night I will be meeting some of the other local loonies who are participating in NaNoWriMo.  We're meeting for coffee at the CC's on Ambassador at Congress at 6:00 p.m.

I'm telling you this in case one of them ends up being some kind of freaky serial killer who poses as a literary geek who tries to write a 50,000 word novel every November.  He lures his victims to a crowded coffee house and gets her wired on espresso in the hopes that her hyper alertness will cause temporary disorientation and frequent trips to the bathroom where he can grab her and take her back to his evil lair.  One he has his victim on his turf, the real horror begins.  Too much caffeine makes the killer too jittery to kill his victim without causing serious injury to himself, so instead he forces her to play Guess Which Jackie Collins Novel is My Favorite until she loses the will to live and does a swan dive off his third floor balcony just to stop the pain.

Tragic, I know.

When it comes to meeting new people, I have this love/hate thing going on.  I like meeting new people cuz the old ones get boring after a while.  But I'm always a little apprehensive at first because these things tend to show off my lack of social skills.  I get a little nervous and when that happens I start to babble uncontrollably and I can hear myself saying the most ridiculously idiotic things but I can't stop myself so I will drink more coffee to occupy my mouth but that just throws fuel on the fire.

By the end of the night I will be exhausted and embarrassed but I guess that's okay if the alternative is death by Jackie Collins.

Insert Inappropriate Title Here

Some content may not be suitable for children...reader discretion is advised. 

I should have that phrase tattooed on my forehead.  Anyway, I've been thinking a lot about balls lately, due in part to this hilarious commercial.

Jayson's been home since Wednesday which means we're back to watching all the man channels on TV at a volume that can be heard from the space shuttle.  This is because he's deaf in one ear and can't hear out of the other.  I used to get confused as to which one is the bad ear until he gave me a little tip that helped to me to remember which is which.  His deaf ear is the one that's always closest to me.

Jayson likes UFC which is on SpikeTV...all testosterone all the time.  While he's watching the fights I'm usually in the living room with him either playing on my computer, reading, making jewelry or doing some other extremely important task that prevents me from cooking and cleaning.  

I've gotten very good at tuning out the TV and rarely even pay attention to what he's watching.  But lately the Axe Detailer commercial has grabbed my attention by the... .

Okay, yeah, it's inappropriate.  But it's extremely well done inappropriateness and I can respect that.  Jaime Pressly's facial expressions are perfect and I know we would be best friends if she would ever return my calls.  I nearly bust a gut when she says, "throw those fuzzy suckers down here".  And that other gal plays with those golf balls just long enough to make you really uncomfortable...which is the point so, good job!  At the end of the commercial I am very touched by the way Jaime shows her humanitarian side when she breathes new life into Mr. Hackerman's dirty old balls.  What a gal!

Obviously I have no problem with balls and could have fun talking about them all day long.  This might cause a person to come to the conclusion that my moral compass is off and I've probably corrupted my 19 year old daughter as well.  Yeah, not so much.

They say the apple never falls far from the tree but I don't think she and I were even in the same orchard.  When it comes to morals, values and a sense of right and wrong and what's appropriate and what's not...Taylor is as straight as an arrow.  I, on the other hand, have tied my arrow into a bow that suits my current mood.  Needless to say, my daughter often shakes a disapproving finger at me.  I used to be like her until I gave birth to her so I figure she'll loosen up eventually.

Back to balls.  I know people have different terms they like to use for their body parts and I have no problem with that.  In fact, most of the time, the proper medical term for some parts is more offensive to me than a slang word.  

Take, for instance, vagina.  It's just not an attractive word.  And it makes me think of fajitas but I'm not sure why.  Anyway, when Taylor was first learning about her body parts she would say that she had a front butt and a back butt.  That worked for a while until she asked more questions which forced me to get a little more technical.  Since my mother never even told me that I had lady bits much less what to call them, I thought I'd be all hip and mature and much better than she was by teaching my daughter the proper medical term for her parts.  This backfired big time when she was about 3 years old and stood up in the cart in a very crowded grocery store and said in that glass cutting toddler shriek, "MY VAGINA ITCHES!!"  

I did what any mother would do in that situation.  I looked at her calmly and said, "it's a good thing your mother isn't here or she'd be really embarrassed."

Nowadays we respectfully refer to our girlie goodies as our hoo-hoo (sounds like who-who) or our vajayjay.  Not that we sit around talking about it all day long, but it does come up in conversation from time to time.

When Taylor turned 6, she had her first slumber party which was also the first slumber party for most of her young guests.  I think we had about 8 girls and one of the things we did to keep them busy was to help them put on a fashion show.  My sister helped them into dress up clothes and jewelry in Taylor's bedroom, then they walked out into the living room to strut their stuff while I video taped.

One little girl had put on this little red sequined dress that my mother had worn for real when she was young but I wore it as a Halloween costume.  As she got closer to the video camera, I noticed that she had stuffed wash clothes into the top of the dress to give her some cleavage.  This really took me by surprise since the girls were only 6 and I wouldn't have thought they'd even think to go there.

As she walked closer I said, "what's that in the top of your dress??"  She grabbed the front of her, uh, wash clothes, looked at me like I was an idiot and said, "you gots to have tits!"

Of course I nearly dropped the camera but I'd had enough experience with this kind of thing to know that if I made a big deal about it we'd never hear the end of it.  If I ignored it, it would go away.  So I ignored it.  And it went away.  But it was all I could do to keep from screaming, "NO!  NO you DON'T gots to have tits!!  We don't say that here!!"

We tend to be more conservative and refer to our chest area as the booblical area.  Or, we may speak respectfully of our breasticles.  No other euphemisms will do.

Since Jayson is the only man in the house, we spend much less time talking about man parts which is a shame since there are dozens of entertaining slang words that can be substituted for them.  When Taylor was little, Jayson had started referring to his jewels, as in don't kick Daddy in the... .  We avoid testicles since that might be confused with breasticles.  

In our house a penis is a penis.  There's no need to even substitue for that one since penis is already such a cute little word.  I have a friend whose grandson calls it his manhood.  I love that!

I think I had a point when I started this but now it's late and I forgot.  It was something about how I think it's healthy to be able to laugh at balls.  Or something like that.

My paternal grandmother was the most Godly woman I've ever known.  She taught Sunday school at the local Big Baptist Church for 45 years.  She loved the Lord.  Jesus was her BFF.  But she wasn't one of those stuffy Stepford Christians, she was the real deal.  It didn't matter who she was talking to, she gave that person her undivided attention, made them feel like the most important person in the room and she would speak to the cleaning lady the same way she'd speak to the President.

When I was pregnant with Taylor I was talking with Grandma and I have no idea how the subject came up, but we ended up talking about sex.  Which was weird.  We'd never talked about that before and like I said, I'm not sure how we got there.

I remember telling her how I thought it was interesting that when men talk to each other about sex it's usually a bunch of bragging and lying.  Or at least that's what I thought at the time.  But when women talk about sex we are extremely graphic and brutally honest.

My grandmother said that she was just glad I was talking about it because she said that people who aren't talking about it aren't doing it either.  

I think there's probably some truth to that but even if there isn't, that's the justification I use for most of my inappropriateness.  It's just a sign of a healthy sex life.  Which is good.  So....balls. 

Dirty Balls?

I have a whole lot to say about this but I'm working right now so it will have to wait till later.  I know...the suspense is practically unbearable.

NaNoWriMo...or Robin Williams on a Rhino

During some of my random internet wanderings, I happened upon a blog where the writer was talking about how they joined this club type thing where they write a novel in 30 days.  Intrigued, I clicked the link and discovered the site for National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo.

Being a visual person, NaNoWriMo gives me very conflicting visual images.  The NaNo part of it gives me fond memories of Mork and Mindy.  But the WriMo part sounds like rhino so every time I see that abbreviation I see Robin Williams on the back of a rhinoceros.  And I think that should be their logo.

So I read up on this NaNoWriMo thing and found that it is a part of a non-profit called The Office of Light and Letters which I swear is straight out of Harry Potter.  I'm still not exactly sure what they're all about but it seems like they exist to promote creative writing and encourage young people to write.  Or something.  It wasn't important for me to know so I just skimmed it.

Every November they give the world the opportunity to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.  That's a lot of words in not a lot of time but I can see the advantages.  You know how if you have all weekend to clean your house it will take you all weekend?  But if some surprise guests just called you and said they're on their way you can have the house cleaned in 15 minutes.

The time it takes to complete a task will expand to fill the time allotted for that task.  That sounds like physics, I bet Einsten said that.  Or Martha Stewart.

So basically, if you give yourself 10 years to write a novel, it will take 10 years.  If you give yourself 30 days, it will take 30 days.  Sort of.  You certainly can't expect to get the thing written and edited in that amount of time but the NaNoWriMo folks know that and make allowances in their rules.

I thought to myself, heck I can write, I'll sign up and write myself a novel!  I've had book plans in the back of my mind for years so this should be a breeze.  Unfortunately I had temporarily forgotten that I don't write fiction.  I don't even know how to write fiction.

Some of the other writers on the Lafayette forum are talking about the ideas they have for scenes and characters and plots and there are outlines and interviews and notes and I'm thinking, "huh??"  I was supposed to have PLANNED for this??!  Well crap.

Still, I'm moving forward because this is something I've never tried before and how will I know if I can do it if I don't ever try?  I'm all about trying new stuff and I'm totally fine with failing new stuff too.  Fortunately there are no real consequences if you fail to complete your book within 30 days.  This is basically just for personal growth, it's not going to lower my credit score or anything.

The problem is that I don't even have a starting point.  Not even a vague idea of what to write about.  If I could just come up with a rough idea of where to start, I know I could build on it.

This reminds me of a car trip several years ago.  I don't know where we were going or why, but we had Taylor and her friend Nikki in the car with us and they were maybe 9-10 years old.  If I remember right, it was getting dark outside and starting to rain.  To pass the time we made up a story one sentence at a time.  Jayson would say a sentence then I would add to it, then Taylor, then Nikki and we just kept going like that.

It naturally progressed into a horror story and when Taylor introduced the uber-scary villian, she said in her most frightening voice, "...and his name was...The Dotted Line of Symmetry!!"

Okay, that made no sense which made it absolutely hilarious.  Evidently the girls were learning about symmetry in their math class and maybe that was horrifying for them.  I'm really not sure.  But here we are 10 years later and the Dotted Line of Symmetry (always said in a scary voice) still shows up in conversation from time to time.

When Jayson gets home we are going to play the Dotted Line of Symmetry game again and maybe that's how I'll write my novel.  I'll just build on whatever random ideas come out of our mouths.  If all else fails, I'll write a trashy romance novel that doesn't require any thought at all.  It's okay for me to say that because I love trashy romance novels.

60A52BB0-3408-672C-7D5F-E763E7561C18

1.02.28

The Hooker Grandma

Today I went to a very nice wedding shower for a friend who is getting married in December.  The invitation said, "Please join us in showering..." which made me feel like I should be showing up with a bar of soap and a loofah.

Dressing for these occasions is always a struggle for me.  I would prefer to wear nice jeans with a nice top and some nice shoes.  All of my jeans either have paint on them or a hole in them, my nice tops are clinging a little too tightly to that second belly roll I am nurturing, and my nice shoes hurt my bunions.

About once every year or so I will wear a dress or skirt if I happen to have one that fits and it isn't too hideously out of style.  As I was dressing for the shower this afternoon, I remembered a skirt and top that I bought recently and thought it might be cute shower wear.

The skirt is long, brown, full and stretchy.  The top is long, tan, full and stretchy.  My kinda clothes.  Then I got all excited because I remembered my new hooker boots that I haven't had a chance to wear yet!  They're black so I knew they would go with my earthy ensemble.

I put on the outfit and immediately felt a little too....full and stretchy.  It wasn't working for me and Taylor agreed. 

I ditched the skirt and replaced it with some long, brown, full and stretchy pants.  That was an improvement but it didn't look right with the boots and I had my heart set on wearing them so I ditched the pants.

Then I put the skirt back on and pulled it up under my armpits to shorten it, I replaced the tan shirt with a multi colored one that I frequently wear with jeans and I added a pair of brown tights.  Taylor said it just had too much going on...which I took to mean that it made me look fat.  So I yanked the skirt back down to my waist but the pained looked on Taylor's face told me that it didn't help.

At that point I was already 10 minutes past my targeted departure time so I had to make a fast decision.  I took off the skirt, put the tan shirt back on, zipped up my boots and asked Taylor to tell me honestly if it looked like I forgot to put on pants.  I have a recurring nightmare where I am either pantless or completely naked in public and I am so mortified that I can barely function but no one around me seems to even notice.  That is definitely one nightmare I do NOT care to live out in real life.

Taylor assured me that I did not look pantless and she had to reassure me several times that the shirt/dress (which is what it was intended to be) was not obscenely short.  She said since I was wearing tights, it was okay.  Once again I asked her to tell me honestly if it looked bad or inappropriate or anything.  She said, "no, you just look like a cross between a hooker and grandma".

I was temporarily stunned that my daughter would say something so disgustingly vulgar about her mother and I made her apologize immediately for saying I looked like a grandma.

I still felt extremely self-conscious and couldn't bring myself to leave the house without something besides tights on my lower extremities.  A quick tour of my closet reverified that I have no other skirts or pants (that still fit me) that would work with this outfit.

In a flash of brilliance I thought, bike shorts!  A pair of bike shorts would give me the security I needed without even showing.  No one would know I was wearing them!  Unfortunately, I don't own a pair of black bike shorts.  I own a pair of neon red bike shorts.  So I wore a pair of neon red bike shorts under my stylish, flowing tan shirt/dress.

I felt fully dressed and didn't have to worry about causing an R rating if I happened to drop my napkin at the shower.

60A52BB0-3408-672C-7D5F-E763E7561C18

1.02.28