Padiddle

"Padiddle!" i yelled excitedly as we drove home tonight. my husband looked at me strangely and smiled slightly, wondering what the heck made me yell out gibberish.

i repeated it again. "padiddle. puh-diddle. don't you know what that means? didn't you see it? don't you want to kiss me?!"

he looked at me even more strangely, no longer smiling, as if i'd lost my mind. obviously he grew up with an incomplete childhood because no one should grow up without the padiddle game.

when you're driving at night and you see a car coming toward you with one head light burned out, you yell "padiddle" at the top of your lungs and then you get to kiss the person of your choice in the car where you're riding.

as a kid, i think i learned this game from my aunts who were young and hip and cool and knew about things like kissing boys. i spent many nights as a young teenager riding in cars where boys were present and hoping that we'd run across one of those lovely padiddles so i'd have a perfect and legitimate opportunity to smooch a boy. i'd see a solo headlight coming our way and i'd hold my breath, hoping it was an elusive single lighted car and not another stupid motorcycle out to trick me and spoil my fun.

years went by and i never saw one of those buggers at the right time. i was always with my parents or maybe my brother when i'd catch a glimpse of one.

finally, one night i was riding in a car with several friends on our way to a youth group activity with our church. i was probably 15 years old. along the road toward us came a padiddle, unmistakable, definitely not a motorcycle. i yelled it out gleefully and then started looking around, thinking of who i was going to kiss.

it wasn't going quite the way i'd imagined in my head. i wasn't crowded into a backseat with several cute boys to choose from. there was one cute boy driving, one not cute boy in the passenger seat and then 3 or 4 girls crammed into the backseat together. i quickly decided the driver wasn't a good option because of the potential crashing factor. i had no interest in kissing the un-cute boy in front of me.

i couldn't bear to let the opportunity pass me by altogether, so i turned to my best friend who was sitting beside me and gave her a big smooch right on the lips.

all the other passengers started squawking and yelling about what had just happened. they couldn't believe i'd kissed her.

in my mind, it wasn't sexual, it was just funny. i'm not sure i'd ever even heard of lesb!ans (trying to trick the naughty google searches) before so i didn't think much of it or understand the dramatic reaction of my friends.

looking back on it now, i guess it shows just how naive i was at that time. i thought i was a lady of the world, but clearly i was wrong. it makes me smile to remember those times and the innocence of hoping for a chance to give someone a quick peck on the mouth. childhood is a wonderful thing.

i like it HOT

i've told you guys that i started doing yoga a few months ago. i was surprised to discover that i like doing it with my little videos at home. i do yoga usually a couple times every week and i've discovered that, in my own estimation, i'm pretty decent at the physical part.

recently, i started wondering if i was any good or if i was butchering the poses and motions. sometimes you feel like you're doing something correctly, but it's hard to see yourself and if no one else is watching to point you in the right direction, it's impossible to know how you're really doing.

i worked out in front of a mirror and sometimes had brooke take my picture when i was in a really awkward pose so that i could see myself and try to gauge my level of accuracy.

my sister started doing hot yoga recently. she's a high stress, high achieving, high intensity kind of person, so this is right up her alley. i, however, am none of those things. when she invited me to join her for a 90 minute class of hot (100+ degrees) power yoga, i reluctantly agreed, but i was sort of terrified. and excited. let me not forget my excitement.

i kept waking up at night with visions of myself falling over with rubbery bones in the middle of a class where everyone else was perfectly posed. i imagined my crotch being exposed to the people behind me as i bent forward in downward dog split. i imagined tears and rivers of sweat and puking straight down onto my mat while trying to get into crow pose.

instead of letting those fears and dreams deter me, i watched a bunch of power yoga videos on youtube. then i went out and bought some tight shorts so that my bits would be adequately covered, no matter my pose. i researched the best way to stay hydrated during an extended super hot strenuous workout and followed all the directions. then i signed up and paid online so i couldn't chicken out.

i showed up early and was very happy to have my sister with me to hold my hand. sometimes i'm a big baby and need my little sister to tell me that i'll be okay.

i was very surprised to find that the heat in the room was delicious. i'm almost constantly cold these days, so it was a wonderful change to be wearing very little clothes and still be toasty warm. i also discovered very quickly that the heat made my muscles extremely flexible. while sitting on the ground with my legs out straight, i could lay my whole face flat down onto my shins.

the teachers came along and made little adjustments on me periodically. one actually gave me a little back massage while i was in forward bend and i almost fell asleep standing up with my palms on the floor. i was able to perform right along with the rest of the class and i didn't feel like i stuck out as a newbie. best of all, i didn't fart once. i've read too many things about the gas passing that goes on during these hot classes and i was resigned to the possibility, but thankfully i was tootless.

all in all, i loved it. i was sad when it ended and didn't feel like it could possibly have been 90 minutes already. i'm glad to have stepped out of my comfort zone and tried something new and i can't wait to go again in three days.

might be time for a fanny pack

i've been pondering a question for quite a while now. it perplexes me daily and annoys me often. it makes me furrow my brow and snark into the air at the stupidity of this situation.

what are women's clothing designers thinking when they don't give women pockets?! so many of my clothes (and brooke's) have either no pockets or tiny little snips of pockets that aren't big enough to hold anything but a stick of gum and an earring.

i realize that it probably appears smoother when looking at a woman's silhouette with no pockets, but honestly, i don't give a rip about that. i want to be able to stuff my phone and keys into my pocket rather than always having to carry a purse which i have to zip and unzip constantly to get things that i use often. if i feel the need for smooth lines, i can chose to keep my pockets empty, but i'd really like to be able to make that decision for myself.

i've also discovered that all workout clothes are pocketless. wait, let me take that back and revise it slightly. ALMOST all workout clothes are pocket-free except for the few that have an itty bitty credit card sized slice of a pocket with no form of closure. i wouldn't even trust a single key to stay put in that pocket and my phone certainly won't fit.

how are we supposed to go safely out into the world to exercise when we have no keys, phone, or ID on our bodies? or is it our jobs, as female exercisers, to creatively solve this dilemma ourselves? i've been stuffing my phone and key into my bra, but when i get up any speed jogging, the phone slides around and is at risk of getting sloshy in the sweatiness that is a sports bra. i usually stuff it between two of my bras to keep it from direct skin contact, but that just makes it slide more.

a couple days ago i found a little mesh necklace bag, so i put my key and phone into that and tied the strings into the drawstring of my stretchy pocketless pants. i was rather pleased with myself for my clever solution, but i caught a glimpse of myself walking past a glass door and and it looked like i had a sparkly loin cloth dangling from my groin. not exactly the look i was going for.

i tucked the whole shebang down inside my pants and then felt like a dude with a package. when i jogged i was distracted by it and i felt like i needed a cigarette afterwards. when i slowed to a walk, i almost expected to hear a throaty chuckle coming from my pants, followed by the never-classy "wham, bam, thank you, ma'am."

as much as i resist it, i think the time has come for a fanny pack. dang it.

chinuvla

since we've been taking some strange pictures around here recently, i thought i'd show some fun ones i got of brooke as well. she's usually up for a photo shoot, particularly if it's a weird one and she doesn't have to smile pretty or hold still.

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1. cute little toe-ies.

2. sole of food.

3. palm.

4. ankle. (just kidding)

5. side of knee with leg bent. funny how many of our parts can look like bo0ties if taken out of context.

6. shrivelly chin.

7. oh that girl and her faces.

8. nostrils.

9. the whole package.

after taking the pic of the chin, she decided we needed a video of her chin singing and dancing. this makes me laugh every time i watch it.

external shell

i posted a photo collage of pictures that brooke has taken super up close to me. details that she looks at and observes and feels the need to study. she likes small things and details and she has a strange affinity for lines. she doodles lines and even tries to draw lines on everything with her eyes so that all the world is connected. she's got a very artistic eye and observes things differently than most people do.

when she stares at my parts and then takes a picture so i can see why it's so interesting, i've learned not to be offended. not even when it's a picture of one of my least attractive bits. i've learned that brooke doesn't show interest in very many people. she doesn't look at people very much. she prefers toys and animals, so when she shows an interest in me, i'm pleased. when she sees art in life, even if it's on me, it makes me happy.

i posted those pictures on my blog here because i thought it was interesting. i know that some of them didn't paint me in a very pretty light, but they made me happy and they made me laugh and they made me cringe.

what i didn't expect was the reaction that it got when i posted a link on facebook. some of my close friends and family members commented with things along the lines of how brave i was or how i was crazy and that the images were disturbing.

it sort of caught me off guard. i went back and looked at each picture again, trying to see it through someone else's eyes. i guess i can see it. there's that one by my eye that i was told looks like a nipple or a cat butt.

however, i like that you can't tell exactly what some of them are. that some of the pics seem a little bit questionable and odd. i even like the ones that show my stretch marks. brooke says they look like roots and she traces her finger over them and smiles, knowing that's the one part of my body that she created. they're the physical reminder of when i overcame my fight with infertility.

let's be honest here. most women don't see much of other women's bare bodies as we age. once we're past college age, we're generally no longer getting changed in a room with other women or hanging out in our underwear putting our makeup on before heading out for a late night on the town. even if we are in a situation around other bare women, like a locker room at the gym, we're doing our best to go as fast as we can while averting our eyes so as to keep from making anyone uncomfortable. the only time you make eye contact in a situation like that is to give the stink eye to the little boy across from you who's paying way too much attention while you try to wrangle your wet clothes off and your bra back on.

for most of us married ladies and mommies, the only bare bodies we see are our own and the airbrushed ones on magazine covers. if the truth be told, there are very few women over the age of thirty in the real world, who have magazine cover bodies. so as we age and our skin stretches or sags or wrinkles, we don't think about the fact that the same thing is happening to all our friends. we might make jokes about it, but we don't let even our sisters or girlfriends have a look at what the years and babies have done to certain parts of our bodies. we stop going out without makeup because we don't want anyone to see the dark circles or crows feet around our eyes. our shorts get longer to cover the veins that pop out. we stop wearing bikinis even if we're at a healthy weight because our stomachs are wrecked from pregnancies.

i guess what i'm saying is that maybe the reason people were alarmed or disgusted by my pictures was because they never see body parts in public that look like that. their own might look that way too, but they try not to look because it makes them feel unattractive.

i don't think we all need to go out showing off our ugliest parts, but i think it would be good if more women could feel less self conscious about those things.

we are more than our external shells.

photo collage of awkwardness

you know how sometimes a photographer will do a collage of photos of a baby or little kid where they focus on individual body parts rather than the whole? those are so cute. the sweet little toes. the darling round cheeks.

brooke likes to take photos like that too; but they're not of sweet, plump babies, they're of me. she likes to stare at me, or more accurately, pieces of me. her eyebrows furrow as she stares intently at some portion of my body, and when i ask her what she's looking at, she runs for the camera to photograph exactly what she's looking at so i too can see why it's so interesting.

here are some of those photos.

let's start at the bottom and work our way up, shall we?

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i'm lovely, aren't i?

in case you're wondering just what parts of me were chosen for inspection and photography, in case you couldn't tell, they are as follows.

1. the top of my toes.

2. the sole of my foot.

3. the back of my calf.

4. my hip.

5. my hip while doing a side crunch. it looks sort of like bread rolls at subway.

6. obviously my stretch marks on my hip. 

7. my sewer rat peeking at her over the edge of my pants.

8. lower case "i" in the middle of my stomach. clearly there's an infatuation with my stretch marks. she keeps telling me that she wants to chew on my skin now that i've lost weight and it's looser than before. awkward.

9. my collarbone.

10. the side of my neck and chin.

11. smile line beside my nose and above my lip.

12. furrowed brows.

13. the side of my eye when squinting.

14. my forehead while making a shocked face.

here is a picture she drew of me today. it's really the icing on the cake.

i decided to return the favor a bit and take some lovely shots of her, but this post is already too long, so i think i'll save those for next time.

protecting our kids

i'm reading a book called "Protecting the Gift" by gavin debecker. i saw it recommended on some parenting page and thought i'd check it out. the main subject is how we, as parents, can keep our kids safe and teach them to keep themselves safe as they get older. i've read various versions of these sorts of books in the past, but this one was a different flavor. it was very practical and i appreciated that.

one of the big things it teaches is how to keep kids safe from sexual predators. that's a subject that makes most of us uncomfortable and some of us queasy. we don't like to think about it very much because there's so much shame and secrecy surrounding it. we think that it can't happen to our kids because we love them so much and we do everything we can to keep them safe. we are good parents, so everything should turn out fine.

i remember hearing as a young teenager that 1 in 4 girls would be molested before she reached the age of 18. i was horrified and would look around at my friends and wonder which ones it would be.

at the time i first heard that statistic, i didn't realize that it was me. even stranger, in hindsight, is that it had already happened, but i had suppressed it and wouldn't even remember for a few more years.

my family was great. my parents were protective and careful about where and how we spent our time. they were careful about who we could be around without close adult supervision. they did everything they could think of correctly.

unfortunately, what happened was something they never would have thought of.

the summer that i turned 5, my mom was babysitting for another girl who was about 10. we were often left to play by ourselves or with siblings or other neighbor kids without a whole lot of supervision. shortly after she started coming over, that girl made me perform sexual acts with the other kids. she would tell us that we were married, even going so far as to perform a "marriage ceremony" to legitimize the whole thing. then she'd give step by step instructions on what we needed to do to each other. we didn't like it, but she was way bigger than the rest of us and when we complained, she threatened to tell our parents what we were doing to each other and we knew we'd get in trouble for that.

thankfully, she didn't need my mom to watch her for very long and soon she was out of my life. looking back, i wonder what must have happened to her to cause her to be acting out in that way. she was clearly a very troubled little girl.

when i was about 12 years old, i got touched inappropriately by my orthodontist. it happened a few different times while my mom was sitting in the waiting room and the doctor was leaned over my chair, pretending to adjust my paper drool bib. or if he couldn't get enough privacy in the exam room, he'd find a reason why i needed more x-rays and he'd back me into a corner in that tiny room and grope me where no one could see. he never said a word to me that wasn't about teeth or my retainer. he just silently found opportunities to touch me when no one was looking.

i don't know why i didn't tell my mom about the orthodontist. i felt all skeavy and disgusting each time i went. maybe i just wanted to pretend it didn't happen because addressing it would have made me look directly at it and deal with it when i really just wanted to forget it ever happened.

when i was 18 and got to college, i got really sick with a nasty sinus infection that just wouldn't go away. i had to go to a clinic a few miles away from the school several times before i finally kicked it. the worst part of being sick was that each time i went to the clinic, i saw the same, yucky old doctor. even though i only had a sinus infection, he always directed me to strip completely and then put on a paper gown that opened in the front. i didn't realize how strange that was at the time and i was so sick that i hardly had the strength to care, let alone question a medical professional. when he came back into the room for the exam, he always opened the gown fully and took my pulse in my groin. he also handled my breasts to supposedly hear my heartbeat properly.

again, i didn't tell anyone other than some friends. none of us knew what to do about it. we turned it into a joke and made up an obnoxious nickname for him and tried really hard not to get sick enough to need to see a doctor.

my whole point in airing out my skeletons like this is to say that we need to protect our kids. we need to teach them to value themselves and what is right. we need to listen to any little warning bells in our heads, even if they don't make sense on paper. we need to teach our kids not to just obey anyone in an authority position. we need to foster a sense of self worth in them so that they won't be prey to the dirty old men, adults who take advantage of their positions of trust, or even other children. we need to enforce an open door policy, literally and figuratively with our kids. that way, we'll be checking on them often and supervising anyone who's with them. if something does happen, they'll know they can tell us. and if, by any terrible chance something out of line does happen to our kids and they tell us, we need to report it. not just try to stay away from that person, but get them prosecuted. the statistics show that anyone who does such a thing to one kid is likely doing it to lots of kids. it can go on for years and years and wound so many innocents who are too afraid to talk about it. too many of those kids will go on to hurt others in the future.

let's protect the gift of intuition and innocence by giving too much information rather than not enough. kids who are likely to be targeted aren't too young to be told about such things, even if their parents feel uncomfortable talking about it. you aren't protecting them by keeping specific info away from your kids, but you might very well be protecting them by sharing what seems to maybe be too much.