What Does Joy Look Like?

I think that it looks something like this. It's nearly been one year since I signed a stack of papers that made this pink house ours. And in that year, we've spent a fortune trying to get the pool working.
I suspect that if you BUY a pool it comes with instructions, maybe even some sort of cursory training. But if you buy a house which COMES WITH a pool.......well then, the training you get is "There are some chemicals in the shed."
For one year we've added chemicals, fixed things, added more chemicals, cleaned it.......and when I say WE I mean THE HUSBAND.
There was the great tadpole extinction of '09 where we had to kill literally thousands of tadpoles that had decided to grow in it - because in our ignorance we hadn't kept enough chemical in it. There have been trips to the pool shop and HELL even a pool GUY came out.
The pool has been, in short, a feckin nightmare.

Everything changed this evening, when it went from a blight to a luxury.......when we stepped into it's water and discovered that THIS was what owning a pool was like.

Suddenly it occured to us what it means, the luxury of it - the sheer pleasure of swimming had us all a little giddy I'm afraid. We have a pool. We can swim every day if we want. We can swim ANY day if we want. Or night.

Suddenly this house just became an even better bargain.

And in the water, my hips don't hurt, my feet don't hurt......my aches and pains that seem to be chronic just vanish. Part of me would like to smack the previous owners for not giving us better information on how to make the pool work. But based on some of the nonsense that they did around my house (ask me about the sparkles embedded in the textured walls of my kitchen) I suspect asking them would not be the best plan.

Is it silly or primal the comfort that you get in a pool of water? We've all just been in this ecstatic place all evening - planning the LONGER swimming session tomorrow. I thought the kids would drop straight off but they're giggling in their room. One has been giggling forever, something like a joyous cackle that he can't turn off.

I guess he had a good time swimming too.

Neither a Steinem Nor a Cleaver Be

So I sit in this group I belong to, a group of women with whom I reproductive tendencies in common, and I am listening to a speaker. We often have a speaker and sometimes they are good and sometimes they are bad but what NEVER fails to blow my mind is how they don't seem to have any clue WHO we are or anything about WOMEN who exist in the year 2009.

This idiot, for instance.

He seems like a nice enough man - until he talks for a while. And he's talking about getting massages, and about the therapeutic/real world/medicinal benefits to your overall being blah blah blah. Yes, we get it - MASSAGES ARE GOOD FOR YOU.

This is when he trips up, because the question is posed to the group "Why don't you regularly get massages" and everyone giggles and mentions price.

I suppose we giggle because we're girls and girls are supposed to giggle. It's the herd mentality at work.

This is when he then goes astray........puts a foot wrong, as far as I'm concerned.

He starts telling us that OUR HUSBANDS ARE OUT SPENDING MONEY! Oh YES THEY ARE!


And that WE DESERVE something nice for our selves.

We deserve to get our hair and nails done! We deserve massages and shopping trips!

Because.......are you ready?



HE KNOWS THAT THIS IS IMPORTANT TO WOMEN.

Blink.


He keeps talking. (I had him a metaphorical shovel).



He goes on about how if we're going to have to make sure our men have pressed shirts, and that we get dinner on the table.........well then that we deserve some luxuries to. AGAIN........he goes BACK to the hair and nails analogy. Again he insists that our husbands are out WASTING money and we don't know it.

Now.........I'm no Gloria Steinem. I'm not burning my bra, cuz I need it to hold up my tits. I like girly things, I like getting my hair and nails done. But basically what I was being told was that these were things I needed.......TO FUNCTION. That for me, as a woman, I had to have these things for my own personal satisfaction.


I suppose so that I'd be less likely to bitch about making his dinner, ironing his shirts and getting him that blow job he needs right after the kids go to bed. "But honey, you got your nails and toes done today - now get to work!"


Cuz that's equality at work! I suppose if I get a massage it's an all anal Friday night then eh? Clearly it's all about quid pro quo at that point.


Which doesn't seem like much of a marriage to me. And no my husband isn't out "blowing money" and guess what NEITHER AM I. If we want things, we make room in the budget for them, we discuss them like grown ups.


So I sat there and stewed about what an a-hole this guy was, and how even though his prices were good I was really sooooo not impressed - that although his wife might be greeting him at the door with a drinkee - really even my barely feminist self was offended at this throwback attitude to women. Basically - I was sitting there hating him and wishing he'd just up and quit pandering to us like a group of females slobbering for male attention.



And then they did the door prize drawing for a one hour massage.

And I won.

So you know, how bad a guy can he really be?

Who knew?

Look Out Snuggie! You've Got Competition!

My husband has alert me to the fact that my beloved Snuggie has competition...THE SLANKET.

Looks like the Slanket has a wider array of colors to meet your cult's needs - as well as reaching out to the cross dressing crowd. AndGuys with fake afro's love the Slanket! That guy apparently works out IN the Slanket - dig the free weight in his hand?!?!

Smart marketing!

Cross Training Is Not Dead

Why one of my boys spent this afternoon cross training to his hearts content! Football and baseball - just like Bo!

He's got to work on his use of the protective gear though.

And wearing a cup vs. pullups might be advisable.

OK OK OK OK You can wear PULLUPS GEEEZ!

The Evian Babies Are Rocking My World

Props to my plurkbuddies who first posted this.

It's a scream.