the silly chair

when you're a kid and you have siblings close to your age, you find things to do to keep yourselves amused. you make up games and songs and stupid stuff to do when you're on long trips or when your toys get old or you're grounded at the same time.

my brother and i are only 17 months apart and we did a lot of that while we were growing up. he was kind of my hero when i was really little and there were also moments when he seemed like my nemesis. we got along better than most kids our age by the time we made it to high school & we shared a lot of the same friends.

at some point, a couple years after my family adopted our sisters, chris (my brother. and yes, also my husband's name) started playing a goofy little game with the little sisters. he'd pick them up and swing them around a little bit and call it the silly chair. it was called the silly chair because they were facing away from him and his hands were under their knees so that when they were scooped up in the air, they were sort of in an awkward sitting position. the little girls thought this was great fun & would beg for turns doing the silly chair. he'd swoop them around, making swooshing, flying sounds to make them giggle.

one day he decided to see if he could put me in the silly chair and swirl me around like the little kids. i was about 14 at the time & certainly not a little girl to be easily scooped or swung about. but he was pretty strong and he did manage to get me up in the air, though he swung me around less vigorously than he did the 3 year old.

he thought it was funny to do that every once in a while, probably because i yelled a lot, but couldn't really do anything to escape that wouldn't also hurt me in the process. so one day his girlfriend and my boyfriend were over at the house and he decided that it would be entertaining to scoop me up into a silly chair & give me a great shake around the room. i was screaming & flailing my arms. i couldn't really move my legs much other than some stupid little kicks which hurt me more than chris, so i just started laughing.

i drew a picture, in case you couldn't picture it.
take special note of his mullet and my perm.

our friends were watching and laughing which only encouraged him even more & served to embarrass me to no end. that made me laugh even harder, causing pressure on my bladder, which of course, ended with me wetting my pants. but chris didn't know i had wet my pants. i was incapable of coherent speech by that point and our friends were laughing hysterically and pointing at the spreading wet stain on my light gray stretch pants. chris thought they were thoroughly enjoying his great show of strength and comedy, not having any idea that whole thing had just gone to a whole new level of mortification for me.


eventually i got too heavy & squirmy for him so he plunked me down on the floor, from where i scrambled up like a scalded cat & hauled it out of the room as fast as my wet legs could carry me.

to this day, i can't see gray stretch pants or think of that boy without my face turning a little bit red & splotchy. and we never played silly chair again.

she's a green diva now

oh yes, my friends, this is an application of the kitty rule.

ladies, this post is for you. men, i cherish you & your company, but this time you might want to avert your eyes. go do a lil reading about baseball or perhaps some cage fighting. or if you're more of an intellectual or just not interested in sports some chess or politics might be more your speed.

i'm not really one to do product reviews (and i'm certainly not being reimbursed for my opinion today), but i came across a little gem recently and i had to share it with you since you probably don't know about it. have you ever heard of a Diva Cup? i know, it sounds like a bra, but it's not. i stumbled across this thing in the feminine hygiene section of an organic health food store and i started snickering & called chris over for a giggle. while i was standing there squeezing the box and reading the side of it, the saleswoman walked over & announced that she just loves her diva cup and she's been using it for 5 years now and will never use anything else. she seemed pretty genuine and not like she was just feeding me a line for the purpose of pitching a sale, so i started asking questions.


okay, the deal with this thing is that it's a little silicone cup that you insert into your vagina during your period and it catches all the blood so that you never need to use a pad or tampon again. it can last for up to ten years if you take proper care of it and it saves you the trouble of ever having to carry extra feminine supplies along when you go places. you don't have anything gross to throw away & risk having a dog dig out of the bathroom garbage can.

admittedly it feels a little different to insert and to wear and i was a bit wary at first. you know how it feels when a tampon is riding low and you fear that if you have a sudden sneeze or laugh too hard it's going to shoot out like a bloody torpedo? well this feels a little bit like that at first.  however, this little thing isn't going anywhere.

it works with a sort of vacuum seal once you get it up in there correctly and then it doesn't come out unless it's given a good pull. you can't be squeamish about handling your lady parts if you're going to use one of these things because there's no long string dangling for removal. but there are so many up-sides to it that i don't think i'll ever go back.

i got it on sale for $30. it usually sells at that store for $37, but then you don't have to buy other stuff for period maintenance for years. you're doing the planet a favor by not tossing that mess into a landfill or flushing it down a toilet.

there's no link to women getting TSS from using it and you can't accidentally have sex with it in, leading to a really awkward visit to your doctor, because it blocks the entrance.

i was talking about it to a friend whose response was, "so you're telling me that you're walking around with a cup of blood sloshing around in your twat right now?" umm... yeah, that's pretty much the gist of it. but it seems to me that it beats a cotton ball on a rope with potential to leak. this bugger doesn't leak a drop. dump and clean it 2 or 3 times a day and you're golden.

this now concludes my unpaid infomercial for the diva cup.

it's not a balloon - friday confessional

this is one of those stories that i've thought of writing for a while because it's a good one, if by good i mean horrible, but i've debated with myself because i try to only embarrass myself here. but today i'm inspired by reading this post by helene & it was a long time ago & no one remembers it but me, so here goes. oh, and i'm going to apply the kitty rule now.

when my daughter was 3, we became friends with a single mom & her little daughter who was close to brooke's age. the girls had lots of fun together & we moms got to talk and laugh & compare mothering tales. we spent tons of time together since chris was at work almost every night & our girls were too young for school so there was no schedule to worry about.

one night, it was getting late, so we decided to give the girls a bath in order to prolong our visit a bit and give the kids something to keep them busy. their house was very small & when i was sitting in the living room, i could clearly see straight into the bathtub, not more than ten or fifteen feet away.

so once the girls were washed up, we left them in the tub, splashing around & having a good time. my friend and i were chatting in the living room. then i noticed that brooke was holding something i didn't recognize. it didn't look like any bath toy i'd ever seen before. she put it up to her sweet, clean, little mouth & started to blow it up like a balloon.



i walked into the bathroom & took it away from her & went back into the living room to ask my friend what it was. she kind of giggled and told me that it was her d0uchebag & why was i asking. i told her that brooke had been blowing into it. she turned red and i turned green.

i pulled brooke out of that tub, got her dried and dressed in record time & then zoomed home to wash & scrub out her mouth in an effort to purify the nastiness. she wasn't pleased at having her teeth brushed repeatedly, but i didn't know what else to do. if i'd thought she could manage some listerine, i would have pried her lips open & poured it in with a funnel.

and that is my friday confessional

yes, she showed me her scar

i believe i'm going to need to apply the kitty rule again for this post. i'll use one i took yesterday since it's handy.

i try to never make fun of anyone other than myself on my blog and since there are miles and piles of things for me to choose from in my own list of stupid or embarrassing events, i rarely need to look elsewhere for blog fodder. but there's a story from many years ago that just makes me giggle every time i even think about it, so i'm going to tell it tonight, in spite of the fact that it involves my husband and a moment of delightful (for me) confusion.

i was newly pregnant with brooke, so it was about 9 years ago, when a friend came for a visit. she already had a baby, which of course meant that there was lots of talk about pregnancy & baby stuff during the visit. she mentioned, in the company of our husbands, that she'd had a c-section with hers. i asked if i could see her scar, so we went into another room and she showed it to me.

here is a diagram of what a c-sec scar should look like if done in a hospital around this time in history, just in case any of you aren't familiar with such nitty gritty. and yes, i did crop the boobs out of the picture cuz i get enough google hits from people looking for naughty stuff that's really not here. and my dad reads this blog sometimes & i don't want to distress him cuz i'm usually nice like that.

after our friends went home, my husband asked me about the c-section scar viewing.

he said, "did she show it to you?"

me, "yeah."

him, "how big was it?"

me, "like, this long" & held my fingers about 4 inches apart.

him, making a horrible face & cringing.

me, "i think that's pretty standard. though i haven't seen many of them. that's a scar that's rarely seen by others."

him, "no kidding! i'm surprised she showed you."

me, "what's the big deal?"

him, "how did she show it to you?"

me, "she pulled her pants down a little."

him, "... and then what?"

me, "what do you mean, then what? she pulled them down & showed it to me."

him, "but how? did she bend over?"

me, staring blankly, trying to work out just how i'd see a scar on her stomach if she was bending over. "of course she didn't bend over. it's right here!" and i drew a line across the bottom of my stomach.

we stared at each other for a few seconds, both of us totally discombobulated, before i realized what was causing the confusion. being that he was new to this whole pregnancy/baby/delivery business, he'd mixed up the words "c-section" and "episiotomy" (thank you, wikipedia for teaching us everything we need to know and want to share) and he'd thought that she was showing me the OTHER scar. no wonder he was so surprised at how nonchalant we were being about the whole topic. and no wonder he was cringing when i said the scar was 4 inches long!

pablo, my love

i'm implementing the kitty rule. as in, when you're going to post a picture on your blog that might be racy or gross or in some way shocking in the dashboard of your readers, you post a picture of a kitten first so that's the one that will show up in the reader. here is the gratuitous kitty picture. (this was one of our kittens in the spring)

this is not pablo.

i have a little secret to confess. you guys can't tell anyone because it might cause problems for me at home. ok, i've found a new love. his name is pablo.

pablo is truly amazing when it comes to meeting my needs. in this relationship, i'm not expected to give anything back at all, it's just take, take, take on my end. pablo doesn't ask anything for himself. he's a great listener. smooth and sleek. he knows how to get into me and give me pleasure like no one ever has before. when i reach for pablo, i'm reaching out of desperation. out of pain. and i know that pablo will never let me down.

pablo, i wish i'd found you sooner. i don't know how i lived my whole life without you. you fulfil a need i have that no one has ever been able to even get close to before. where others are weak, you are strong. and let's be honest - you are curved in the best possible way. i think about you frequently. i can't go a whole day without you. when i'm out with my husband, we can be sitting there at dinner or in a movie, but sometimes i can't think of anything but you. i need you! sigh. i have to get my pablo fix frequently. i just need to grab you & put you straight into my mouth. aahhh, the relief. the satisfaction. you're like a drug to me.

judge me gently, people. meet my lover, pablo the tooth picker. he can pick teeth like nobody's business and he'll never splinter like a wooden toothpick. shun the wood. go for metal!

if i could afford some dental care, i might be able to kick pablo to the curb, but until then, the affair continues.