i DESPISE summer!

WARNING: There is adult language in this post

 

Just shoot me now.  Please.

I know, I know... I know that I'm not supposed to.  After a long winter and meteorologically weird spring, I know that I'm supposed to be SO happy that heat has come to Canada... but for me, summer in Southern Ontario sucks the BIG ONE, BIG TIME.  Summer sucks King Kong's massive dick and the Blob's sweaty balls.  It sucks Godzilla's gigantic gonads and Pulgasari's prodigious prick.  It sucks Crocosaurus's collasal chubby!  It sucks  Mothra's massive meat stick!  Summer SUCKS!!!

Honestly, I would rather have -45 °C with the windchill than a humidex of over 27 °C. You know why?  Because you can dress for the cold.  You cannot dress for the heat.  Once you're naked, short of flaying the skin from your body, you can't get any more naked.  How many times must I powder my inner thighs so that they don't stick together?!?  HOW MANY?!?  'Cause I am not, nor have I ever been a gal who has a 'thigh gap.'  And who are these sick pukes who are hyping the 'thigh gap' as something to achieve?  I want to find those people and drown them in a pool of cellulite.

I have heat rash on top of my heat rash.  You cannot feel sexy when you have heat rash on your ass.  David will kiss me before bed, trying to get my motor running...  I look at him like he has suggested that we roll in barbed wire and then have a salt water bath.

I start sweating IMMEDIATELY after getting out of the shower.  I have to dry off AFTER drying off... Several times.  Humidity is an oppressive bitch!

I have fantasies about snowstorms or a cold snap in the fall - that is what I want.  It has only been 3 days of hot so far this summer.  I'm doomed.  No wait!  If I hide in the basement and we use only the BBQ to cook, and I exist on Diazepam I might be able to survive.  I might make it through to September.  Or.... OR... I could just spend the entire summer at the movies.  Now there's a way to problem solve.  I wonder if I could sneak in a sleeping bag.  Wish me luck.

Pocket-Sized Bombshell

My friend is a bombshell.  When I'm with her, it's like hanging out with Marilyn Monroe.   A shorter, more shapely Marilyn Monroe.  She is the flame to every male moth within her orbit.  Has been ever since high school.  Most definitely she is gorgeous, that's part of it, but she has something MORE.  Something intangible.  I don't know if it is her pheromones or her complete disdain for the males of our species in general, but every time I'm with her I feel I need to document the experience for a psychology journal.  It's something to see.

Marilyn Monroe photographed by Milton Greene

 Picture, if you will... We sit at a table, minding our own business.  Almost immediately, any straight male within arms' length puts his shoulders back, sits up straighter, sucks in his gut.  They start talking a little louder so that they can maybe get her attention.  Then other dudes at tables a little bit further away and those sitting at the bar fall into her wake.   I'm not saying that she's a landlocked Charybdis, but it is kind of like watching a whirlpool or black hole suck things into it.  And she's just sitting there...  Not noticing the men salivating at her.

Honestly? I think that it really is because she could care less.  She has no interest in those guys and that, well that added to her ridiculous sexpot, bombshell beauty is what does it.  I could be naked doing the Charleston and I swear to God not one man would notice me. And I'm a redhead with D-cups.  She could totally do mass-hypnosis with this power.  If I could figure out a way we could make money off this super power - I could be her agent and we'd be rich!  Until then, I will just watch and document - it must be worthy of a phenomenon being named after it at the very least.

This is your "Go-To"?

WARNING - This post is about sex. 

We took a workshop at an 'adult' club in 'sensual sensory deprivation.'  Welcome to marriage after the first decade.  When David mentioned it, I immediately imagined a water tank in the dark in complete silence, basically like being trapped alive in a box, pretty much my ultimate nightmare, but with the added horrifying element of being in the water.  But I was willing to give it a whirl.  What the hell, right?

It turns out 'sensual sensory deprivation?' Was blindfolding.  Okay, so David and I have been married for almost 15 years.  I'm pretty sure that we tried blindfolding each other the 3rd weekend we spent together.  And yet, when the instructor, Mistress... Suitably Clever/Slightly Scary name asked who had experimented with blindfolding, in this room of 20 couples,  maybe 4 sets of hands went up.  I was baffled.  I mean really, truth be told, we were at what was pretty much a swingers' club.  Couples were mostly there to hook up with each other.  David and I?  Were there for the workshop.  And to swim naked in a heated pool.  I mean, why not?  We were there already and had 1/2 an hour to kill before the workshop.   Sure, I'd accepted a shot of single malt scotch from another couple, but I was really doing that just being polite.

So when only 4 couples sheepishly admitted to having blindfolded each other - it struck me as odd.  These couples went to a swingers' club to hook up with other couples before they tried blindfolding.  Sex with strangers before blindfolding.  And blindfolding, if we're being honest, is really the most benign of sexual kinks.  I know, because I know stuff.  I have read A LOT...  REALLY. A. LOT.  I knew about stuff long before there were 50 Shades of Grey.  But here I was feeling like part of the most worldly couple in the room because, not only had we done blindfolding, but we'd done sensual massage  (isn't that really just lead up to sex anyway?), and found interesting uses for silk scarves.  I know. I know.  Too much information... but I just thought it was weird.  Don't you think it was weird?  I always figured that marriage was about a couple figuring out together ways to spice things up - you know as a couple.   No third, fourth or fifth parties, no barn animals.   You pick up one of those books that suggests newfangled sexual positions, you blindfold each other, buy some edible underwear and you're good to go.  Right?  Am I too old-fashioned?

My boobs aren't supposed to be there.

So you know when you lie on your back in bed and your boobs nearly rest in your armpits?  What is that?   Remember when you were in your 20s and the girls were pert and perky and in their place?  It's not like they're National Geographic boobs now, but as I approach 45, they do have an udder-like quality to them that they didn't once have.

I mean, sure, David's not complaining, but then dudes don't seem to mind what kind of shape the boobs are in... as long as they're boobs, you know?

When I'm lying in bed, if I tilt to my left a bit, the right one is gorgeous - it faces the ceiling perfectly, but then the left one is actually IN my armpit.  If I move too far to the left, it's like a scene from Titanic where EVERYTHING starts to slide.  Sometimes it's fun just to flop back and forth to see what happens.  If you do it in water, you can almost create your own jacuzzi. Really, this as a perk.  I should market it.

You know what would be even better?  Prehensile breasts.  Breasts that could move on their own!  No woman would need a bra because the breasts would self-adjust to the perfect level!!!  There must be scientists out there working on this!  I'm afraid to google it though - there'd be some crazy-ass shit coming up in the search results.

Touch her and die...

I am now the mother of a teenaged daughter.  How the hell did that happen?  One day she was 3 and now she's 13.  Rissa is now 13.  Except she looks like she's 17.  She draws the male eye.  And not just the eye of her peers, but the eye of dudes who are a good 5-10 years older than her; dudes who excel at leering.

I remember what it was like being a girl of her age, with a cute little figure and watching as the boys ran into things because they were looking at my ass instead of where they were walking.   When it was happening to me - I thought it was hilarious.  "Look at those dumb boys!  That guy ran into a light post!"  Now it's happening to her and it's freaking me out.

As a direct result of my freaking out, I'm starting to freak her out.  But I'm trying to be cool and hip about it.

"We'll have a code," I say.

"What kind of code?"

"Put down the machete."

"Huh?"

" 'Put down the machete' will be code for anything stupid that shouldn't be happening.  Like when a guy tries to touch your boobs, you say 'Put down the machete.' ''

Rissa looks at me like I'm nuts.

"Anything drug-related could be 'Stop smoking the baby.'  Like if some stoned dude offers you and your friends anything to do with drugs, you say... " I pause, eyebrows raised, waiting for her to fill in the blanks.

"Stop smoking the baby?"

"Exactly."

"O.....kay."

"Guy tries to cop a feel?" I quiz.

"Put down the machete."

"You get offered drugs?"

"Stop smoking the baby."

"Perfect!  Plus it just makes you sound crazy, and most folks don't want to mess with crazy people."

Me grabbing the testicles of any dude who tries to feel Rissa up.

I brought this on myself.

WARNING: Female things discussed.

Peter de Seve, Thar She Blows (sketch)

I am in idiot.  Why couldn't I just leave well enough alone?  Sure, there was that pregnancy scare because I hadn't had my period in 3 months, but why couldn't I just embrace the peri-menopause?  Why did I have to seek out the OBGYN who put me on pills to regulate my wonky periods?

"Take one of these pills the 1st to the 15th of the month for the next three months."

"D'uh... Okay Doc." 

I should have just cancelled the appointment.  I mean sure, before the 3 month drought, when the appointment had been set, I was down to a 17 or a 15 or an 18 day cycle, but what if that 3 month drought was leading into actual cessation of bleeding?  Did I just ruin it? 

'Cause two days after I stopped taking the pill...

 THAR SHE BLOWS!!!

The flood had returneth.  I used to think that two days of heavy bleeding with make-you-yodel cramping was bad.  I take it back.  5 days of heavy bleeding with accompanying cramping and blood clots the size of toonies is worse.  My body, was not happy with me.

Plus?!?   UNDER THE CHIN ACNE.  What the hell?  For those three months, my crazy-ass, peri-menopasue acne had abated.  Period comes back and I looked like a small pox victim. And MOODY?!?  Great mother Gaia - the mood swings.  David and Rissa exist in juxtaposed states of placation or self-preservation depending upon what emotion is wending its way through my body.

I now have to maintain strength of resolve on account of the frickin' food cravings.  There was a tray of praline encrusted graham crackers at the office yesterday.  Praline encrusted graham crackers should not be eaten by me.  There was enough gluten and sugar in those tidbits to take down a water buffalo.  After having eaten 4 of those suckers my already tenuous hold on civility was gone.  I felt like shit and I felt guilty for having allowed myself to be seduced by the deadly plate.  I needed to exercise and was a petulant and despondent lump.  I had to walk.  I didn't want to walk.  I wanted to lie in bed and read erotica.  But after dinner, I put one depressed foot in front of the other and I walked.  And  just the way Karen Walrond told me to in her Houston TEDx talk, I looked for the light.   With the sun low in the sky I found myself on the boardwalk, breathing in the wildflowers, crouching down to pet a furry caterpillar and listening to the red-winged blackbirds.  Clichéd, dorky, make-you-feel-good things.  But you know what?  They did.  And by the time I returned home 45 minutes later I was no longer a peevish sheep and I still had enough time to lie in bed under the covers and read erotica.   It was really win-win all around.

Snatched from the jaws of death...

So basically, if you threaten a cat with euthanasia?  They get better.  That's what happened to Steve.  One day at death's door ...  Me checking in on him every two hours overnight as he was sequestered in our main floor bathroom.  Him just lying there - near flat as a pancake and all glassy-eyed.  And I'd basically prepared myself for taking him in the next morning and giving the order.  The "put him out of his misery" order.  Except that the next morning - there he was sitting up and when I called his name, he actually looked at me, all clear-eyed and on the cusp of being alert. 

Apparently, each beast we own gets one funding of extraordinary measures.  We give them that one brush with death.  That near-cross on the River Styx.  It's happened with a bunch of our cats.  Nym - $900 who then managed to live another couple of years.  Bardolph - $1800 - for a month I had to feed that frickin' cat through a tube in his neck because he refused to eat - and then he was all better and lived another 4 years.  So they each get their one episode.  They either bounce back, or they get put down.  We prepare for the worst - know when to cut our losses and they sense it.  They know that if they want to remain on this mortal coil they perk the fuck up and live.

And for that I'm thankful.  Because Steve is the greatest cat.  He is a cat of epic personality and snuggliness.  It would have sucked to put him down.  And now?  After a 1/2 dozen visits and re-checks from our amazing vet team, he lies on the foot of our bed and purrs.  Yesterday, he started playing again - chasing after toys, cavorting under my feet.  He's back.

ps - We are the human parents of a feline rock star.  Every single person working at the vet clinic knows and loves Steve.  "STEVE!"  "Hey buddy!"  "Hiya handsome!"  "How's Mr. Steve?"   Nobody there knows my name, but by God they were pulling for my orange tabby.  My cat.  My goofy and personable cat had everyone in that clinic wrapped around his paw - that positive psychic energy may well be what saved him.