Gooseberried

British Commercial

For those of you who have been following me since the beginning of this blog, you'll know that I used to date a British lifeguard and did so for quite a long time.  The relationship ended badly and actually, I haven't spoken to him since we broke up, but I am grateful for the experience mostly because dating him gave me the opportunity to travel around Europe a little bit. 

The British school system typically starts later than the American system and so when I would get out of school in May for the summer, he'd still be attending.  When I started school in August, he still had a month and a half left of vacation.  So, when we'd visit each other, usually for about a month each time, we had to put up with the fact that whoever was in their home country would still going to classes every day. 

One of the times I was visiting him in England, I was at his house by myself and he was at class.  I didn't have much to do as it was nearing toward the end of my visit and I had already been to the local stores and coffee shops within walking distance.  I had also already gone to class with him a few times.  So, I opted for watching some British TV.  Luckily, they had Friends on and I quite enjoy Friends, especially for passing the time.  I was basically zoning out on the couch when a peculiar little commercial came on.

The man in the commercial was getting dressed up for some formal event.  He chose a nice looking suit and I will admit, he looked good.  It seemed that the final step to his getting ready routine was to spray some cologne on various areas of his body.  Upon doing so, he takes a deep breath and loves the smell so much that it inspires him to turn on the stereo and start strip dancing to the music.  First the coat, the tie and the shirt come off and he's dancing around the whole time.  Then his shoes and pants and you can guess it, he actually takes his boxers off.  And I can see everything.  His penis is there.  And I can see it.  And can I remind you that this is merely a commercial!? 

So, he continues to dance around in the nude, penis flailing, until his friend texts saying, "Where are you?!"  The nude man is so inspired by the smell of the cologne that he skips whatever event he was planning on attending to stay home and dance naked. 

At this very moment in my life, I really wouldn't mind seeing that commercial again. 

Let's see how many people stop reading my blog after this

Well, I was a little disappointed that I received more comments on the stay at home mom post than on my candy one.  I thought telling a story from my childhood would be much more entertaining.  It was to me, anyway.  But I suppose controversial subjects do tend to attract more people.  And so, I'm here to respond to your comments and not just link what someone else feels (even though I do agree with it), but to explain how I feel.

And I'm going to start by telling you how I got to be the person that I am.  I'm not sure I can call myself descent, as Jim does, but I try.

I was born from my biological parents who were two alcoholics and persistent drug users.  One day, the two of them got up and left.  To another state they went and there I was, all by myself barely a month old.  I almost died.  Luckily for all of you, because of how much you all adore me and couldn't live without my blog in your lives, a neighbor discovered me and reported the situation to the police.  The police tracked down my biological mom's parents, my grandparents, and because my birth given parents were no where to be found, my grandparents were granted custody of me.  Because of this, my grandparents are my parents.  I've never called them grandparents and I've never called my biological mom, my mom. 

So, I hope you all are following me at this point because it may get more confusing.

My mom married my dad when she was 18 and by the time she was 23-years-old, she had three kids.  She didn't go to college (it was uncommon for women back then), and she didn't work.  She was a loving stay at home mother.  And to this day, she resents it.  Sure, she's happy with who she is now and doesn't regret her life or marrying my dad (they've been happily married for over 40 years), but she's always telling me to wait, wait, wait, please wait, before I get married because she doesn't want me to experience the same things she did at my age.  She wants me to have a different life than that.

Now, I came into my parents lives at quite an awkward time.  My dad was working hard at his job, set to retire at 55 (and he did) and my mom was in school and at a high point in her career, set to retire at 54 (and she did).  When I came along, neither of my parents quit their lives and what they loved.  According to Jim, they should have.  Instead, they put me in daycare.  And while all of us who have good relationships with our parents will always say I am grateful for what they did, I will wholeheartedly say that I am so glad my mom didn't become a stay at home mom for me. 

First of all, she would have been miserable.  And the fact that my parents took me in and got me out of being an orphan was enough for me.  I didn't need my mom to give up her then life on top of that.  That's just too much.  And no kid should be treated that way.  I'm sorry Jim, but I completely disagree with you about parents having their children be their number one priority.  But, I'll get into that more later.

Secondly, I LOVED DAYCARE!  I still have dreams about it to this day.  I seriously have vivid dreams of playing on the playground at daycare.  It was so much better than my actual school's playground.  The friends I made, I'll never forget.  The candy prizes.  The independence I felt compared to other kids on my block even at that age.  Plus, I didn't have to go to kindergarten because of my daycare's schooling program and once I did go to first grade, I was smarter than all the kids there because I had already learned in daycare what we were learning in first grade.

The fact that my parents put me in daycare does not mean that they loved me any less.  My mom was not a terrible mother because she chose to continue her education and keep working.  My mom was and is a fucking rock star.  And I say that in the most rock-n-roll, Led Zeppelin, cool way that I can.  Yeah, man.  She was at every important event in my life.  Every concert, every dance performance, every parent-teacher conference, every school performance and on top of that, she was getting her degree and working full-time.  Not to mention, she was well in her forties. 

So, that is just my particular story and I can understand where people might disagree.  I certainly know that some women (and men!) are meant to be stay at home parents.  There are a lot of young women from my home town who have chosen this path and if it makes them happy and fulfilled, then so be it.  But I agree with Dorkys when she said that that life is not for me.  If you want to convince me to be a stay at home mom for instance, you'd have to be a stay at home mom who went to school and worked for a while prior to becoming one.  And the more you've done, the more I respect you.  Hot damn! to those women who raise kids to become descent people which is like you said, Jim, an enormous and significant task, but to do that and to work and to go to school and to, and to, and to, is just so much more inspiring to me.  Oh and single moms and dads, amen to you and your amazing-ness. 

While I say I can understand where people might disagree with me and I am open to hearing them out, I have to also say that I'm somewhat disappointed in my disagree-ers, Becs and Jim.  I love you guys and am not trying to piss you off, but I couldn't just respond to you in a comment.

Becs, I understand that you want to be a stay at home mom and that you're fine with that choice especially since you've already been to school and have been working for a few years.  The thing is, many stay at home moms aren't in that same situation.  Most stay at home moms I know have never traveled, learned any subject since high school or have ever even had a job.  I don't persecute these women I describe especially because many of them, like my mom, didn't choose that life, it just happened that way.  Sometimes a family isn't what a stay at home mom wanted.  In my mom's case, it was common to get married early and she was fine with that.  But they didn't have the birth control methods they have now and women didn't have as many choices then as we have now.  And I've found through my own personal research that many women lead the stay at home mom life because it was expected of her either from family, church, community, etc.

And when you say that you wanted to go off on the guy who said a stay at home mom went crazy, it is easy to be offended by that when your mom was a SAHM.  But the truth is, many SAHMs do go a bit senile.  That kind of life isn't meant for every woman and I don't think that a women should have to submit to that life if she wants to have children, Jim.

I completely disagree with you when you say that children should be parent's number one priority.  No way!  No one can be a good parent if they are unhappy.  If a mom can find a happy balance for herself between her career and her children then again, more power to her!  I've also been reading a lot about how many divorces occur because of this point-of-view.  Everything is given to the kids and nothing remains for the spouse.  It's easy to fall out of love, when it seems like someone doesn't love you. 

Read this: http://sanctimony.net/2009/03/secret-to-happy-relationship.html

I love reading that story.  

I'm also feeling very sorry for the dads in your guys' argument.  The poor dads who have to go to work and support the family, don't get to participate in the baseball games and dance classes, since he isn't a stay at home dad.  Poor dads of the world!

Well, that's it.  Now, go ahead and yell at me.  Unfollow!  Unsubscribe!  :)

Candy battles

My parents are pretty big fans of small, chocolate treats.  They've always had a particular liking for M&Ms, fun size Butterfingers, Snickers, Milky Ways, 3 Muskateers, and so on.  I think they were going to quit smoking a few years ago and to help them out with the cravings, they decided to keep a little bowl of these treats in the living room.  Well, they're still smoking and that bowl is still there and is typically full on any given day. 

Not that I could complain about that.  The smoking?  Oh yes, I hated that growing up.  But the chocolate treats?  Bring it.  When I was little and there was the chance that M&Ms were the treat of choice at the moment, I would sit with the entire bag in my lap.  To start, I would pull out two M&Ms and smoosh them together.  Which ever one cracked was the loser.  Red against yellow?  Yellow wins because red cracked and died.  So, I ate Mr. Red.  I'd pull out another one and he would compete with the winner.  Now up: Yellow against green!  Green wins!  Yellow gets eaten.

It was like a little game I played.  I would do this over and over until I was finally sick of eating them.  I played this game with Skittles too and Skittles were especially fun because they were made of that squishy jelly. 

Imagine if your only worry at this very moment was which M&M is going to win?  Would that be a good or bad thing?  I'm not sure.  But it would be a nice little break.  A break from the economy, the emotions of dealing with a sick loved one, the lack of money and the plethora of bills, the drama and uncaring of friends, the worry of a poorly working vehicle when it's all you have, or whatever else you and I have going on in our lives.

The list seems to never end.  But then again, neither do the making of M&Ms.

Finding my center

Yesterday, I had a break though in my yoga class.  After going for several months now at several times per week, just recently I was telling a friend that I felt as though I would never be one of those people who just fall into the difficult poses with ease.  Then again, I wasn't stretching on my own either because, I HATE STRETCHING.  Yes, the awkward, skinny girl who looks flexible but actually isn't is me. That's probably why I got my knee injury in the first place, because stretching is, in my opinion, total agony.  I've always been more on the muscular side versus the flexible side and therefore, stretching has never been natural to me.  I was the only cheerleader who couldn't do the splits in high school, and I am one of those weird people who feel uncomfortable sitting on my heels.  Also, I'm a very fast paced type of person and doing something where I must sit, relax and basically enjoy doing nothing is not something I'm going to be motivated to do.

This is why I do yoga.  It forces me to slow down.  It forces me to stretch more muscles than I knew I had without actually realizing that I'm stretching because I'm thinking, "Oh my hell, get me out of this pose!  I'm dying!" the entire time.  Needless to say, after a few months of this I was getting discouraged.  I felt like I should be more limber, less awkward and more flowy, but I still felt just as out-of-place.

Then yesterday happened.  In the midst of class, in a particularly hard and twisty pose, I was able to think to myself, this is easy.  What was once hard and almost impossible for me to do in the beginning was like eating donuts now.  And many times, when I'm feeling challenged by any pose, I glance at my teacher almost as a way to make eye contact with her and send her a brain wave asking, "Am I doing this right?  Can you help me?"  And usually, she'll come over and correct the things I need to focus on.  This time, however, I gave her my standard read-what-I'm-thinking glance and she nodded and smiled as if to say, "You got it, Michelle!" 

It made me think of what she had prefaced the class with before we started.  She had told us to think about all those times when we wanted to retreat to the "screw this" - "I give up" attitude when faced with a challenge in life.  Then she told us to focus on the times when, despite feeling these emotions, we pressed on, embracing the difficulty and dealt with it on our own.  Upon doing this, she asked us to remember the blissful feeling afterward of knowing that we did what we were dreading, we got through it and now we're better and stronger people for it.

Through yoga, I feel as though I have met a never-ending challenge, I embrace it as something I am willing to deal with and even now, I am a better and stronger person for it not only physically but also mentally.  It may seem simple and somewhat ludicrous, but through yoga, I have truly grown.

I don't think I have ADD

It's always been a bit on the tough side for me to remain focused.  My mind likes to challenge myself into trying to think of several things at once and see if I can succeed.  I do it in my work life and in my personal life.  It's all rooted in the fact that I've always felt like I'm in some sort of a hurry.  I never actually am, but I still move as quickly as possible through each task I endeavor.  That's just always been my personality.  I do things as fast as possible so that I might move on to the next thing.  I guess you could take a guess and say I have ADD but the thing is, I have the ability to focus, I'm just not militant about practicing it.  This is why I love yoga.  Yoga helps me to practice focusing on one thing only, instead of letting my mind wander around like a hobo. 

The other night, I was laying side by side in bed next to Eddie and doing the usual- thinking of about five different things at once.  Meanwhile, Eddie was trying to be silly with me.  He grabbed my loose-as-a-noodle arm and began hitting himself with it.  I, on the other hand, am not even noticing because I'm gazing into the ceiling thinking of many things.  Then Eddie says, "You're hitting me in the face.  I'll frame you for assault!"  Without even thinking, or even knowing what the situation is, I calmly say in response, "Fucker."

Then Eddie immediately starts cracking up at how simple and natural my response was.  Normally, had I been paying attention, I would of said something like, "Oh yeah?!  You won't have to frame me, because I'm just going to beat you up!"  But nope.  Instead my argument was...fucker.  I had to ask him to repeat to me what he said, because I didn't even know.  I guess you could say my mind lost the challenge this time, but that's probably because my mind is a fucker too. 

When moms get too close

An ugly family created an ugly son.
And held his hand through all things small
They believed they surpassed everyone involved
And didn’t consider others’ feelings at all

When the son said, “I don’t like this and that!”
The family jumped and tried to console
They had their nose in everything
Destroying the goodness in his soul

Now the son is alone and sad
He thinks only of his own needs
His family’s ignorance pads reality down
While the son forgets about doing good deeds

The family’s mission has been accomplished
The son has no one else in his life
And while he wonders why he feels so empty,
he stabs his own heart with a knife.

Good vibrations

You guys were right.

It was a vibrator. As soon as it started vibrating and I realized what it was, I threw it across my car and threw up in my mouth a little. I immediately ran into Target and washed my hands a couple of times. I bought some of those disinfecting wipes and used one to pick it up and throw it into the big dumpster in the parking lot. I texted all of my girl friends and asked, "This might be an odd question, but did any of you lose a vibrator in my car?" No one claimed it.

Some of my friends think someone dropped it in my car, because I leave my windows cracked a little bit on hot days, as a sick joke. Whatever the actual story is, I’m starting to realize that the weirdest things happen to me.

A shiny object

Last Saturday, I had a pedicure appointment at 9 AM. This is why I mentioned before getting rid of the daily Starbucks because believe me, I have several guilty pleasures I'm willing to spend my money on like pedicures, clothes and jewelry.

Because I've gotten used to waking up at 5:30 in the morning every day, I can't seem to sleep in anymore on the weekends. I woke up at 7 and decided to go run some errands before my appointment. On my way to Target, a Nissan Xterra slammed suddenly on their brakes in front of me and as a result, I had to slam on mine too. In doing so, a shiny metal object which must have been in the back of my car somewhere, flung itself underneath my seat, through my legs and up into the driver’s side floor by the petals. I only got a quick glance of the object since I was trying to focus on driving. The only reason I had even noticed it was because it was shiny and therefore, a glare shone off of it from the sun while it rolled itself on my floor.

I finally pulled into the parking lot and shut off my car which gave me the opportunity to see what the object was. It was about four inches in length and made out of a hard plastic material. I thought it was metal upon first glance because it was painted silver and black in some areas. The only way I can describe its shape is that it was like an average sized tube. It sort of looked like the handle part of a flash light. I could not, for the life of me, figure out what it was. I was immediately thinking to myself, Dear Lord this has got to be a piece of my ever-dying car that must have fallen off or something. I shook it around to see if it would make any noise and give me a clue as to what it was. Nothing. I tried to twist it open as hard as I could. Nothing. I tried to pull it apart and after a few minutes of using the feeble, early morning strength I had, it finally opened up and out rolled a AA battery.

At that point, I realized it didn’t belong to my car because I couldn’t think of anything that would run manually on its own with the power of a battery that could belong to my car. I put the battery back in and twisted it back together. Then I noticed in very small writing which I hadn’t noticed before it said, On Off Battery. I twisted it over to the On side and...

Can anyone guess what happened or what the object was?

Where did you get your dildo?

Internet,

Thank you, genuinely, for all the supporting comments.  I really appreciate it.  It's still hard and doesn't seem to be getting any easier at the moment even though I'm on week #2 of break-up life.  I've been hanging out with my friends a lot and they've all been super supportive.  On Saturday night, I met some friends of mine downtown for a couple of drinks.  I'm not typically a huge fan of going out to the bars, but I figured at this point it is better than being couped up in my studio apartment Anne Frank style. 

I decided to leave the bar early because I just wasn't feeling it and all I wanted to do was get home.  Closing time here in Arizona is 2 AM and I left at about 1:30.  While I was walking to my car, two girls stopped me on the sidewalk. 

Girls:  Hey, do you live in Flagstaff?  We're not from here.

Me:  Yes.

Girls:  OK, so do you guys have a [some store I can't remember the name of.]

Me:  Um, I've never heard of it, so I don't believe so.  What is it?

Girls:  It's like a porn Wal-Mart.  A huge store with lots of dirty stuff in it.

Me:  Oh.  No, sorry.  We don't have one of those.

Girls:  So, how do people here get their dildos?

Me:  Well, I've heard of people having sex toy parties.  I've never been to one but I have friends that have and have ended up getting some sex toys there.  Other than that, I'm guessing online?

Girls:  Oh my God, that sucks!  You just can't purchase a dildo online!  You have to see it in person, touch it, bond with it before you can just buy it!  You know?

Considering myself lucky

Last week, 6-6 and I went to Chili's which has fast become one of our favorite places to be recently because of how amazing the margaritas are.  The wait staff at Chili's is pretty extensive and even though we visit the place frequently, we usually have different people waiting on us each time.  This time we had a waiter and unfortunately, I didn't catch his name.  Immediately he seemed too good to be true.  He was nice, attentive, friendly- he seemed to actually care about what he was doing which is rare these days due to the many waiters and waitresses I've had who look like they hate the world.  And really, they actually might. 

We ordered our usual- two Presidentes.  He kindly asked, "Would you like to add any chips and salsa to that?"

That night, we didn't feel like eating so we declined.  When he returned, he had two waters in hand and a basket of chips and salsa.  He placed them on the table and said, "These are on the house.  The margaritas will be up soon."  Before we could get a chance to ask why they were free, he walked away. 

We were amazed at our gift.  The only time I've ever been given anything free at a restaurant before was because I had friends who worked there.  We both didn't know this guy so we didn't get it.  We instantly started thinking of the reasons why he might be inclined to give us free chips. 

Maybe he was gay and had a crush on 6-6.
Maybe he was straight and had a crush on me.
Maybe they were an old stash the restaurant was trying to get rid of.
Maybe they were accidentally ordered when no one wanted them.
Maybe the guy is just sincerely nice.

Eventually he returned to inform us that they were out of the Presidentes that night.  We were bummed, but we had no problem ordering a different kind.  I got the Top Shelf Margarita and I can't remember which one 6-6 got.  Minutes later, he returned with our drinks and some surprising news:

"I was actually wrong.  We aren't out of Presidentes; we're just out of the Presidente shakers that come with the drink.  I informed my manager and we're preparing two Presidentes for you guys because it was our mistake.  You'll only have to pay for the drinks you have now."

We couldn't believe it.  First, free chips.  Next, two free and typically expensively priced margaritas.  We both decided that had we gotten high before going, we would have been freaking out at this point. 

We still couldn't place why anyone would be this nice to us but we decided not to continue obsessing over it.  We just considered ourselves lucky and proceeded to get pretty drunk. 

When we finally left, got in the car and sat there to warm it up a little, 6-6 said to me, "When you were in the bathroom our waiter came up to me and asked me if I was your boyfriend.  When I told him I was, he went off on how lucky I was to have you.  So, I think we got our answer to our free night."

You have no idea how flattered I was to hear that.  Jeff however, looks kinda worried or, um, something...

Either way, this event is going to make all other Chili's visits seem incredibly disappointing.  You mean, we actually have to pay?