She's Got What It Takes

Not much can better bond two women than a good eye roll over another woman, arriving late to a business meeting, pushing her cleavage in front of her.

It seems like we should be beyond that but we're not. (Okay, I'm not.)

I know there are a few different philosophies on this. One is that women should wear whatever they damn please and there shouldn't be any eye rolling. Another philosophy is that women should wear whatever they damn please, but it's not going to get them any special benefits.

I don't subscribe to either. It's quite simple for me: cleavage is about sexy and sexy doesn't belong in the office. We also live in NH and for a good 8 months of the year, it's just too cold to expose that much skin; for that reason alone someone who does it should be identified as an idiot. World Class.

I know it still works for some women though. I worked with one over the last few years who became known as "[So-And-So] And-Her-Big-Boobs." Even the guys called her that. "Call "[So-And-So] And-Her-Big-Boobs and ask her if she (and her big boobs) can make it to the meeting." Despite such a damning nickname (or I guess, in light of), and even though I never, ever once heard one thing escape her mouth that could be considered even remotely smart or thoughtful, her career has been absolutely meteoric.

When do you think men will wake up and realize there's a class action suit here? Don't you think if one of them showed up to a business meeting sporting plumber's butt, they'd be out on their butt in a nanosecond?

I doubt it will happen because too many of them want to protect their view, but don't you agree?

www.rocksaltandwildflowers.com

I've been looking at dirty snow lately and instead of being excited about spring and looking forward to summer, I'm just resentful. This time of year is usually fun for people who live in NH because during the winter, human presence is virtually undetectable.

Once March tumbles in, people start turning out. Although during the heart of January they might have been outside shoveling, snowblowing, scraping their windshields, they don't look at you. There is an unwritten rule of NO-EYE-CONTACT. You don't want to get into a conversation with anyone when you just know your tongue is going to be stuck to your lip if you open your mouth just to say "hi."

(If the Aliens come to Earth during the winter, they will identify NH as a wasteland where they will set up headquarters and this will be good for them because by the time spring arrives, they will have conducted enough research and will be prepared to meet people in the slow, small, consistent doses that March and April appear to provide.)

Literally, people start appearing. They wave and smile. It's usually worth a good smirk to realize that your community is just sort of suddenly, "populating."

I don't care. I'm still resentful. Besides being chronically resentful about just about almost everything else you could possibly imagine, I'm resentful that I can so vividly picture the memory of a snowplow on the road in front of me, spewing rock salt and dirty snow onto the hood of my car and completely obscuring any visibility through my windshield. I can remember it as though it happened on the way home this evening, despite the fact that we're enjoying 55 degree weather here.

It's just that I hate rock salt so much. It poisons animals, pollutes the environment, kills the paint on my car, ruins my shoes, and strikes me as such a sterling characteristic of living in New Hampshire.

My new blog address (which I'm waffling about and which I think I might change again) was an impulsive decision. I concluded that I needed to try just a little harder to be happy living on the banks of melted, salted, sandy, poisonous grey slush for five months out of the year.

Most people might just plan a trip to Florida. Or change their real address. But I'm here, it doesn't look like moving is in the cards, and I have a blog. And I do like the wild flowers during the summer. I once heard someone say the seed was so expensive they didn't know whether to plant it or smoke it.

So, the new address is www.rocksaltandwildflowers.com. I am attempting to embrace the fact that living in NH means living with rock salt, while reminding myself that wildflowers provide beautiful roadside distraction. Or something like that.

I'm not sure what will happen to all my fans but I can't let you hold me back. (Seriously, I noticed my links to Cool Blogs and Random Interests didn't come with me, so I guess I'll spend an evening this week recreating that list.)

Also, I know Forsythia isn't technically classified as wild, but it sure looks wild and it's one of my favorite plants. I love the fact that it flowers before it grows leaves. It's so hopeful.

People who prune their Forsythia like hedges should be sent to PRISON.

By the way, today when I went into work, the creepy guy who's in charge of maintenance was using a real, electric vacuum cleaner in the parking lot. You know why? Because a regular broom isn't enough when it comes to rock salt and sand.

BIG NEWS

Changed my blog address.

The new address is www.rocksaltandwildflowers.com.

The old address was stupid.

I'm taking my alien with me.

Is This The Greatest? Yes. It Is The Greatest.

This is the greatest. It is the best and the most awesome.

I LOVE THIS. Don't you love this? You couldn't possibly NOT love this.

Today is March 9th, I lost an hour of sleep, it snowed 6 (f'ing) inches but I am just psyched because I now have my own little alien. I have a whole bunch of photos of these on my office walls. My biggest problem now is deciding whether I should take it to the office or keep it here at the house.

Seriously though, is this the most awesome little alien. I think everyone should have one. Everyone should have their own little alien, and I GOT ONE!

Michael Hawes made this and I love it even more because he said he got into the wine while he was making it.

That's exceptionally funny to me because I myself knocked back a few and then proceeded to practically knock myself out laughing hysterically while I photographed it learning to play Chuzzle, waiting for dinner and watching Special Vics.

(No, it wasn't really doing those things, okay? And I didn't really think it was, okay? It was just a joke, okay?)

Then I realized, "wait, that's not so funny, it's just funny to me. Maybe I should give it a day."

Check it out though, it's playing Chuzzle.

This is an awesome bone.

Happy Birthday, Here's A Toothbrush

My mother was almost fanatical about recognizing birthdays, anniversaries and holidays; even the most obscure ones deserved a card. On some occasions I was almost offended when I was surprised the post office or bank was closed...because my mother had failed to notify me of an approaching holiday by wishing me a good one.

Flag Day, Arbor Day, even that kind of thing. She might not always have had a card for it but we heard from her -- sometimes it was just a postcard. Her favorite line went something like this, depending on the occasion: "It's [name the holiday] and I'd like to tell you how I feel...I feel fine, thanks."

Since my mom isn't around anymore to celebrate birthdays and holidays with little cards and all that kind of stuff, and everyone is going through a few years of getting used to it, I've been thinking it's important for all of us to honor that. I've been thinking it's important to at least recognize a few birthdays: Her sister's, maybe? Her closest cousin? Her best friends?

Well, I doubt I'm the first to inform you but...there's a long stretch between thinking and doing. Thankfully, my brother inherited the card-generating-gene and he appears to be filling the void, quite nicely in fact.

Because of that STUPID Facebook however, I realized it was my aunt's birthday and since I know she likes assorted chocolates and I had figured she might want to try some of NH's best, I purchased a box of chocolates for her. (Well Identified: Soft Centers).

The intent was to mail them, she lives in California.

I think they were in the car for at least a few days, but in NH, it was well below 40 and they weren't sitting in the sun, so I wasn't too concerned. I was already about a week late, so what did it matter?

I ended up cleaning out my car though because I had to give someone a ride. I moved the chocolates from the car to the mud room and I put them on top of the dog crate. They were only there for just a couple more days (she wouldn't have cared, she likes dogs).

At some point, I must have thought it wasn't right to leave them on the dog crate though because I know I moved them. In the following weeks, I saw them on the window bench in the dining room, on the dining room table, on the kitchen counter, on the kitchen island, on the sideboard in the dining room (just kidding, we don't have a sideboard), and on the coffee table in the living room.

Finally, they wound up on the kitchen island again.

The Y Chromosome and I came in from having dinner at La Caretta last night and I asked him if we really should test the candy before I mailed it.

Keep in mind, I patronized THREE (3) girl scouts this year. I always figure that considering I don't have kids of my own, I should be the winner of bulk purchases for each girl, so we have plenty of sweet chocolate treats in our house: Somoas, Thin Mints (they'll be sued for that one some day), Tagalongs, you name it. (In my defense, at least some of those boxes make their way to the Food Pantry and I figure I should get double, if not triple points for that.)

It took about a nanosecond. He paused before he replied, the gold elastic band went flying off and an entire box of chocolates lay open before us.

I am so glad I did not send these to my aunt.

Hello? Pink cream? Check this out. It reminded me of when we
were little, we'd try to put them back together and hope one of our brothers popped the whole thing in his mouth.

You can't swallow the stuff, it just coats the inside of your mouth and tastes like a recipe of 1 tablespoon paste; 6 of saccharine.

And there was gel too.

It's so shiny it was hard to photograph.

Who eats this stuff?

And am I an idiot? What did I think "soft centers" meant? I am sure my aunt would have thought, "How old does she think I am?" because this stuff is clearly designed for people without teeth.

Of course, if you do like this kind of thing, having no teeth is most likely not a reliable indicator of age, but in fact, an indicator that you might have eaten some of it.

(This one to the left, it's green.)

We broke each one open out of curiosity and then we ate some Somoas.

FYI: I PREFER FILET

My sister says that it's very appropriate to "prune the tree of life." By that she means if you don't want to be friends with someone anymore, it's okay to break up with them.

After I spent almost a year telling her about a particular person/couple (I don't know why I bother being ambiguous, they're not reading this, that's for sure) we decided it wasn't such a great friendship, and I shouldn't feel bad about calling it quits.

When I called my sister and happened to tell her that this person/couple had shunned our, reluctant, invitation to a particular event (at the last minute) her reaction was, "Oh, YAY!"

No. No, not "Oh, YAY!"

I understand that the net outcome was EXACTLY what I was looking for, however, I was dumping them. Not the other way around.

This is the way it works: when I decide not to be friends with someone, I usually end it with a grand gesture. I insist on picking up the tab at a good and expensive restaurant, give them an embarrassingly generous gift, execute that final last favor-that-should-never-have-been-asked-of-me, or present them with something like a really nice bottle of what they don't know is Farewell Wine.

Keep in mind, this happens rarely, but when it does, I have good reasons.

In this case, even small encounters with this person/couple required copious amounts of alcohol; there was way too much "imbibing" and the next day was always just totally wasted. I try to avoid those kind of people because frankly, we don't need the help (it's not lost on me that they probably felt the same way).

Second, I'm not really crazy about people who so monopolize the conversation that they kick into high-speed, pressured speech so that no one interrupts them for the entire evening (hence, another reason for the way-too-much-imbibing -- if you can't talk, you got nothing else to do but drink, right?).

I know what you're thinking, you're thinking that people would naturally do this around me because I want to monopolize the conversation. Well, that might be true, however, it was also accompanied by maniacal laughter, weird outbursts of anger and other bizarre behavior that made me feel sort of uncomfortable and stressed out (and particularly since I'm so self-centered, I started to believe that I was the inspiration for it).

So I had good reasons and originally, I thought good luck.

There had been a general distancing of the relationship which had not concerned me. There had been a few incidents that would be easily excused between friends but in this case could be easily construed as subtle signs. I was thinking there wouldn't be a need for grand gestures - that the relationship would die a quiet, natural death...a mutual parting of the ways: dismissed as simply, "not a good match."

However, as luck would have it, a last minute favor was needed and I was greedy. I was quick to seize the opportunity. I saw it as a nice opportunity to tie up the relationship in a neat little package. Big bow on top.

What a mistake.

I should have just said, "sorry, can't" but I didn't, and things took a turn for the worse. They wanted to thank me and they insisted on having us over for dinner to do it. They served the most enormous steaks I have ever seen, never mind eaten, and the combination of being hungry, greedy, not being able to get a word in edgewise, and not wanting to be there, wasn't good...I probably demolished about a pound of it. Maybe more. I was sick for two days.

So when my sister said, "Oh, YAY!" it was like a firecracker went off: the last minute cancellation, subtle signs, little incidents, and the huge steaks.

They had served us our last supper...I had been greedy, they got the grand gesture, and we had been dumped.

Am I Missing Something Big Here?

Being one of the most important people I know, I receive sometimes close to hundreds of e-mails in a day. The weird thing is that most of them have to do with pharmaceutical drugs that aren't necessarily appropriate for women.


(This is a picture from our trip out west -- I'm cleaning up my e-mails along with some old photos on my laptop.)


The subject line of these e-mails usually reads something like, "Hi, Keep Her Satisfied All Night Long."

Not really, mostly, something like this:

"Hi, keeepe her satesfyd night all along."

It's obvious these people certainly weren't up studying the English language all night long, that's for sure.

I don't know why I keep getting these things. Is my name on a big long list somewhere?

Who is "Her" and who are these people sending these e-mails saying "Hi" like they know me?

(Here is a picture I found of the Space Needle when we went to Seattle a couple of years ago.)

The one that popped up today was from GOLDINAANTHONY and was entitled "Havee a lifee-loong holdiay with..."

I would ask who responds to these e-mails but I'm not sure I really want to know the answers to any of these hard questions.

Obviously, however, someone must be responding to them because when I open my e-mail, I am never let down. There they all are, coming on strong.

Satisfying all night; spamming all day.

In general, I believe that resorting to talking about matters of such delicate nature for the sake of comedic value is lame. So, don't get me wrong. I am totally, completely, serious.

People need all kinds of medicine to help them sleep, control their cholesterol, perk them up, whatever.

I just wonder why people wood take advice from an e-mail and then wood purchase a remedy over the internet. What happened to using the telephone?

Someone has to be buying into this stuff because they make it into such a big deal.

I'm so tired of it though. I feel like if I added up all the time it takes me to delete these things, it would be like, four hours. And I think after four hours, it's concerning and could be an indication of a greater problem.

(This is a recent photo of the Washington Monument. I think photos like this are kind of dumb considering you can just get a
post card but someone insisted on taking it.)

Somehow, I just know that talking about this issue is going to make it worse, though. I think men would say that.

It's enough to drive a person to drink.
(That was funny...like I need something to DRIVE me to drink.)

The Y Chromosome Who Lives In My House says that he doesn't know anything about this stuff and anyway, he's signed a confidentiality clause. What?

Am I missing something big here?

There are plenty of other products on the market I might be interested in.

For example, where would I find one of these? It's a really cool light fixture with plastic goldfish bouncing around inside (or swimming upstream, I guess) and it changes colors. I never get any e-mails about these.

Now click here.