BOYS AND THEIR PENISES

I have said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m at a loss sometimes when it comes to raising a boy. I didn’t grow up with brothers, or male cousins. I haven’t the faintest notion of how males work. If I did, I probably wouldn’t be single.

Girly things I can relate to. I know about getting periods, and breasts, and gynecological exams. I can do makeup, and hair, and clothing coordination.

I don’t know the first thing about penises, except that they’re demanding, and seem to take precedence over all things. For the past few days, my son, who’s almost ten, has been obsessed with his penis. He and I can be sitting on the couch, having a perfectly lovely conversation about reading, and suddenly he’ll pull down his pants and treat his penis like a finger puppet—making it speak and move. Sometimes, it’s a volcano, threatening to explode. (I don’t want to read too much into that one.)

When stuff like that happens, my brain goes off in a hundred different directions, trying to decide the best way to handle these situations.

A sexually-repressed mother would probably slap her son, and tell him to never let “that thing” out again—which may result in him growing up and unleashing “his thing” every chance he got.

A sexually-liberated mother might tell her son to embrace his penis, to never be ashamed of nudity—which may result in him growing up and embracing his penis every chance he got.

I find myself falling somewhere in the middle: I don’t want to see his penis, especially in our living room, but I don’t want him to be in therapy over it later on either. I realize he’s discovered his penis in a way that will now make it front and center his entire life. I also can’t help but think that if I had a daughter, I seriously doubt we’d be talking about her vagina in the third person.

Or maybe not. Maybe there are little girls out there who liken their vaginas to, oh, I don’t know, flowers, or walk around pretending their vaginas are meowing.

When your child’s genitalia takes on the importance of say, a best friend, how should a mother react?

I don’t want my son to be embarrassed or ashamed of his budding sexuality, but I also don’t want to have conversations with the “little guy,” if you know what I mean.

So far, I’ve humored my son, and told him to keep the little General in his pants, or I’ll chop it off and throw it in the dumpster. But then I wonder if joking about it may cause irrational fear of castration in his future.

When push comes to shove (no pun intended), all I really want is for my son to learn to use his penis for good, instead of evil.

Anyone have any helpful advice they’d like to share?

CELEBRITIES, QUIT YOUR BITCHING AND MOANING

I wear clothes that cost more than a down payment on a home in Minnesota. I can afford to have Evian water flowing out of my faucets. I have nutritionists, personal trainers, chefs, nannies, astrologers, accountants, publicists, managers, agents, all at my beck-and-call.

WHO AM I?

I’m a celebrity who is living their dream come true, yet still expects to have some semblance of a “normal” life. I wear the BEST clothes, (although sometimes I’ll wear a plain white Gap T-shirt to the Oscars just to show how “normal” I am).I eat the BEST food (although sometimes I’ll slum it to the local 7-11 and buy a bag of Cheetos and a slushie just to show how “normal” I am). I live in the BEST houses (you actually won’t ever catch me slumming on my digs, so forget showing how “normal” I am in this department).

Celebrities, let me tell you what “normal” is: “Normal” is needing to wait for your tax return before you can do any home improvements, or necessary things, like getting your leaky roof fixed before toxic mold sets in and poisons the entire family. “Normal” is eating vegetarian at the end of the month, not because it’s the trend, but because you only have twenty bucks left to feed your family of four until your next paycheck. “Normal” is having your kid’s birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese’s, with the hundreds of other screaming stranger-kids, not renting Disneyland for the day.

Do spoiled celebrities want to be the kind of “normal” I just described? You bet their insured asses they don’t! So will someone please tell them to stop all the whining about wanting their privacy respected? They’re a PUBLIC personality. Just like a politician will suffer public humiliation should the public find out they dropped acid and banged a different chick every night back in their college days, so should a future celebrity know they will suffer the loss of their privacy if they become famous.

I love the celebrities who play dumb. The ones who claim they love what they do, yet didn’t sign on for the “bad stuff.” That’s like a nurse saying she became a nurse to marry a doctor, yet has no intention of wiping asses or cleaning up vomit. Or a vet who loves animals, yet doesn’t want to have to euthanize any of them.

Every job has its negatives. How screwed is the average Joe once they find out they have carpal tunnel syndrome from doing the same repetitive crap over and over, and have to be on permanent disability for the rest of their life? How about Black lung disease from working in a coal mine? What about being a cop and getting shot?

And celebrities complain about loss of privacy? That they can’t go to the supermarket or McDonalds anymore without getting mobbed by adoring fans and paparazzi who want to take their photo? REALLY? Do they honestly think there should be no negatives whatsoever in their profession? That the hardest thing for them to deal with should be having to choose between Valentino or vintage Dior? Where in their karma does that even remotely smell like fairness?

All an actor needs to do is be on one wildly-successful sitcom for a few years, and they never have to work another day in their privacy-deprived sorry life. Meanwhile, they’re living in their gazillion-dollar mansion, you know, the one with the three swimming pools, tennis court and home movie theater and gym; they can afford to send someone to do their shopping and mundane errands that folks like us would kill to have someone do for us.

Oh wait, they want to be “normal,” with privacy, so I guess that means they’d rather live like me…swimming in a cloudy public pool, with fifty other people I don’t know. Or working out in a germ-filled, sweat-ridden gym, hoping I don’t catch a fungus. Or communing with other movie-goers, who inevitably forget to turn off their cell phones, and bring their freaking baby to an R-rated film. Or quickly making a box of mac n’ cheese for dinner, because I have to rush my son to soccer practice, and quite frankly, I don’t have the energy to cook anything else, because gee, I have to do EVERYTHING myself.

What was that, Mr. and Mrs. Celebrity? You don’t want my life? You want all the glory, riches, and preferential treatment, but not have to suffer for it?

My advice then would be to buy your own private island, because you know you can afford it, move there with your entourage, and bitch and moan to people who get paid to care.

ASS IN CHAIR

“Writing equals ass in chair.”—Stephen King, On Writing

Pretty straightforward and simple advice, no? Then why is it so freaking hard to do? I’ll admit I probably spend more time procrastinating over writing than I do actual writing.

Everyone says it gets easier the more you write. I’m finding that NOT to be the case. I’m in the process of writing my third novel. Each time I sit down to write, it’s like I’m learning English for the first time: awkward sentence construction, abundance of clichés and spelling errors.

Some believe you should get all your ideas out on the page, without any self-editing—a verbal diarrhea of sorts. The problem with that method for me is when I look back on the words and see crap, any self-esteem or future inspiration I may hope to have stagnates—constipation, if you will.

So I tend to think more before I write. Problems arise when I don’t know what to write; I don’t know where my story is going or what my characters are going to do. Instead of trusting in the organic process of writing and allowing ideas to flow from me, I procrastinate instead. Here’s how my day goes:

Fire up the laptop; read the news and check emails. Read other writers’ blogs, peruse various forums, threads, loops, and comment when necessary. It is often necessary.

Start stressing because I haven’t begun to write yet.

Google “Why wives won’t have sex with their husbands,” or “Why do men cheat.” Read gazillions of never-ending sob stories. Feel grateful that I’m single.

Check Facebook. Resist the desire to stick a fork in my eye after being forced to read all the insipid inspirational quotes and cartoons that people post, just to get to one piece of news I actually care to know.

Continue to stress because I have no clue what I’m going to write that day.

Check email again.

Think about opening my WIP document to stare at the screen. I do not go through with it.

Do a half-assed work-out, in the hope that divine inspiration will hit me due to increased oxygen reaching my brain.

Shower and stress while shampooing my hair, because the day is already half over and I still haven’t written a goddamn word.

While picking up son from school, I finally envision how the next scene in my novel should play out. Of course, now interruptions and noise levels are at maximum level, what with a hundred kids running in and out of my house, the diva Chihuahua barking at every single noise she hears, and my son demanding to eat or drink something every thirty seconds.

I’m fired up though, because I have an IDEA, so I rush to my computer. As I’m in the process of getting that idea down, I feel an amazing sense of accomplishment (kind of like when I don’t feel like exercising, but I do anyway, because I know if I don’t I’ll feel like a loser all day).

If my son is occupied for a bit of time, and he doesn’t need an extraordinary amount of help with his homework, I can manage to get a few pages of writing done, thereby increasing the word count of my stubborn WIP.

When all is said and done I wonder, Why in the hell did I not get my ass in the chair sooner?

If I got my ass in the chair at the same time each and every day, instead of doing all that other mindless crap, I may have a shot at an actual writing career. Perhaps not as prolific a career as Nora Roberts, who churns out five (FIVE?!) books a year, but maybe, just maybe I could earn enough to support a daily white chocolate mocha habit.

IS 10:30 A.M. TOO EARLY FOR HAPPY HOUR?

Some days I don’t feel like being a mother. Some days I don’t even feel like being a person, especially when I find a stinky dead opossum with four dead babies rotting away underneath my shed.

My life consists of laundry and dirty dishes and cooking and yard work and cleaning the new spots of dog piss on what remaining carpet we have left, and trying to explain to my son why it’s not okay to leave poop-stained underwear lying around the house.

Sometimes it’s 10:30 a.m. and I wonder if it’s too early to start drinking. Who said Happy Hour needed to start at 5 in the evening anyway? The things I used to do to relax are no longer possible. Sleeping in; drawing the curtains and watching movies all day; NOT cooking or cleaning. It’s been almost ten years since I’ve done any of that.

Well-meaning folks always tell me, “Enjoy every minute. Kids grow up so fast.”

And sometimes they don’t grow up fast enough, is what I want to tell them.

Or they say, “Just you wait, soon they won’t want anything to do with you” and “They’ll be out of the house before you know it.”

I think, Ahhh, then I’ll get to sleep in, or sleep naked, or sleep with another adult. God, I can’t wait.

I dream of the days when I might finally be able to write without a gazillion interruptions. I’ll certainly never be at a loss for story ideas. The other day, a newspaper story read:

“Jilted dentist gets revenge by pulling all of her ex’s teeth—The bar for break-up revenge stories has just been raised. Anna Mackowiak, 34, a dentist in Wroclaw, Poland, is facing jail time after pulling out all of her ex-boyfriend’s teeth in a calculated fit of rage. While this is obviously unacceptable behavior, 45-year-old Marek Olszewski’s head is clearly missing more than just teeth, if he thought he could walk into his ex’s office without hesitation only days after dumping her for another woman and ask her to work on a toothache. Mr. Olszewski will have many lonely nights to ponder his actions. His new girlfriend was not cool with the toothless look and has left him.”

I couldn’t make that stuff up even if I tried. Seems like someone took “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” a little too seriously. I’m sorry, but did the man not realize after his sixth tooth was pulled that something was amiss?

How about this headline? “Meth lab explodes in man’s pants during scuffle with cops.” Apparently, he was cooking meth and driving at the same time.

It’s a good thing there’s no shortage of idiots in this world, just like there will always be celebrities who cry over their loss of privacy and then get caught for soliciting man-boys in the bathroom of LA Fitness.

There are days when I’m up for the “Mother of the Second” award, and other times when it’s all I can do just to get through twenty-four hours without sticking a fork in my eye.

FAT-THIN-POTATO-TOMATO

This is a photo taken on April 18, 2012 of Demi Moore, with her good friend Amanda de Cadenet. Demi is Hollywood thin; Amanda is not.

Who would you rather take to bed?

Most would agree Amanda is how a woman should look: Marilyn Monroesque, curvy, voluptuous, while poor Demi appears skeletal.

But here’s the thing. If you were to look at these two women separately, away from each other, I’d bet most women would consider Amanda a tad on the thick side. Put Demi in a skin-tight dress, instead of the terribly unflattering crap she has on in this photo, and a lot of women would be insanely jealous of her thinness.

I’ve come to the sad realization that women want to be thin and look amazing only to outdo other women. They may think they’re dressing for men, for example, but they’re in fact, dressing to look better than any other woman who happens to come within a one-mile radius of them.

I HAVE NEVER MET A MAN WHO HAS SAID HE PREFERS BONY, SKINNY WOMEN!

When I put on about thirty pounds, my ex thought I looked awesome—more junk in the trunk and all that. I’d look in the mirror and only see me as the 300-lb. version of Gwyneth Paltrow’s character in Shallow Hal. I may have been more attractive to him as my hefty self, but I felt downright gross.

Why do women try so hard to be bony and skinny? Is it because all the women in magazines are bony and skinny? NEWS FLASH: Models and actresses have to be bony and skinny, because 1. The camera puts ten pounds on you; 2. Designers use models without hips and curves, because their clothes drape better on them (and because most of them are gay and secretly wish a naked man was standing in front of them modeling their clothes, instead of a woman.); 3. Go to Wardrobe on any film set and note the sizes: they only have 2 and 4. If you happen to wear a size over those, gossip about that will spread faster than a cold virus in an over-crowded kindergarten classroom.

Would you rather sleep with Christina Hendricks…

Or Keira Knightley…?

I can almost guarantee you that all men would rather sleep with Christina Hendricks, a size 14. Men prefer soft and curvy: not jabby, pointy and flat. We all remember the tasteless comment Madonna’s ex, Guy Ritchie made about how being with her was like “cuddling up with a piece of gristle.”

I can also almost guarantee you that an awful lot of women admire and covet Madonna’s trim physique.

So while a male friend of mine and I can argue for hours, because he insists men prefer this…

I, as a woman, will always prefer this:

Are women simply victims of societal standards that determine what constitutes beauty?

If men prefer heavier women, then why do women strive to be as thin as tongue depressors?

THINGS THAT MAKE ME GO HMMM

Budget Cuts. My son has no school for two days due to budget cuts. I’m ready to write a check to the school district just to make everything go back to normal. Finding out you’re going to have a couple of budget cut days is like finding out you have to go to traffic school—it sucks and you just want it over and done with.

Pair budget cut days with pouring rain and you get a recipe for a nervous breakdown. Don’t get me wrong. I love my son. But in small doses. A little boy goes a long way. Multiply my little boy with five other little boys, playing video games and running around my house carrying chocolate-covered granola bars in their grubby little hands, and you get a prescription for Xanax.

In order to keep what scarce sanity I have left, I had to find what little humor I could in this hellish four-day weekend. Here are some questions that amuse me and make me go Hmmm.

Why do we call it a hamburger when it’s made from beef?

How come there aren’t any B batteries?

Why do black olives come in cans and green olives come in jars?

If a word in the dictionary was misspelled, how would we know?

Why does your gynecologist leave the room when you get undressed?

Why can’t women put on mascara with their mouth closed?

If you mated a bulldog and a shih tzu, would it be called a bullshiht?

Why is it called Alcoholics Anonymous when the first thing you do is stand up and say, “My name is Bob, and I’m an alcoholic”?

Can blind people see in their dreams?

Why are they called apartments when they’re all stuck together?

Why does mineral water that “has trickled through mountains for centuries” have an expiration date?

Ever notice when you blow in a dog’s face he gets mad at you, but when you take him on a car ride he sticks his head out the window?

Why is there ever only one shoe on the side of the road?

If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?

 

Oh boy, I cannot wait for summer vacation.

LAST CALL

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about death. I’m middle-aged, after all, even though mentally and emotionally I still feel like I’m twenty-three. I read articles all the time on secrets for how to live to be a hundred and ten, even though they always say the same thing: Eat vegetables, nuts and seeds, exercise, eliminate stress, and be happy, and I think, Ok, I’ll do all those things once I retire, except by that time I know it’ll be too late and then I get stressed out over this and obsess over the fact that I could die any day now, so I eat French fries and chocolate to console myself, but then I’m not happy and I know I should work it off, but I don’t, because I feel too much like a bloated pig to exercise.

Healthy habits = 0 for me, but here’s the thing—how many people on their death bed wish they ate more veggies and omega-3s, or had tried a Zoomba class? NO ONE.

Here’s what some people did say were their biggest regrets in an article from The Guardian on Facebook.

Bronnie Ware is an Australian nurse who spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. She recorded their dying epiphanies in a blog called Inspiration and Chai, which gathered so much attention that she put her observations into a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

Ware writes of the phenomenal clarity of vision that people gain at the end of their lives, and how we might learn from their wisdom. “When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently,” she says, “common themes surfaced again and again.”

Here are the top five regrets of the dying, as witnessed by Ware:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

“This was the most common regret of all. When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honored even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made. Health brings a freedom very few realize, until they no longer have it.”

2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

“This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women also spoke of this regret, but as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.”

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

“Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.”

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

“Often they would not truly realize the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.”

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

“This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.”

 

So how are you doing on these?

Living my life my way has always been singlewritermom’s biggest challenge. I already wish I could have blocked out everyone else’s expectations for me and listened to my own drumbeat sooner. When I was a wee little lass, I skipped fourth grade, and excelled at learning foreign languages. Hence I became “the smart girl,” who everyone hoped would get a job at the United Nations one day (No pressure though). I then morphed into “the pretty girl,” who no doubt would grace thousands of magazine covers and travel the world. Except then I became “the sick girl,” and nobody knew what the hell to do with me, except continually ask, “Well, what the freak are you going to do with your life now?”

Sadly, it wasn’t until I hit forty-three that I could admit to being a writer without feeling like an imposter.

As for wishing I hadn’t worked so hard? I’m pretty sure I’d wish I’d been able to work harder. I’m specifically referring to exercise, but not for the health benefits to extend my life span. I would have loved to have seen my body with muscle definition—kinda like a body-builder type, but more Rachel Mclish, then Bev Francis. Just once would I have liked to have worn spandex without an oversized T-shirt covering my ass. Running a marathon would have been pretty cool, too, except for the training and the vomiting afterwards part, since everyone oohs and aahs over that accomplishment.

Feelings…Yeesh, I actually express my feelings too much. At too loud a decibel. A filter on my mouth probably would have helped at times, because the meds sure don’t. I suppose my regret would be that I hadn’t kept my big yap shut during times I should have. (Examples: “When are you due? Oops.” and “If I could get away with it, I’d kill you.”)

Perhaps I’ll wish I’d stayed in touch with friends better, but a few really good ones dumped me for being a little black rain cloud, thus resulting in my belief that friendships are transient and fickle in general, so scratch that one.

Now #5 is a tough one for me to wrap my mind around, because happiness isn’t a choice for say, the clinically depressed. And many people choose to forgo their own happiness for the sake of others (like staying in a bad marriage for the children, or inviting the senile mother-in-law to come live with them.) This is called self-sacrifice, and will no doubt get you into a heaven where chocolate mousse and margaritas are calorie-free. Is self-sacrifice a bad thing? Depends upon how miserable you end up. If you wind up grandchildren-less or paying for your children’s therapy, because the kids are so jacked-up from your less-than-stellar union, or you keep sending your MIL out to buy milk every day in the hope that she won’t come home, that’s a problem.

Notice how nobody wished they had had more sex, or tried bungee jumping? I would have thought at least a few would have wished for better sex, or sex while bungee jumping. But that’s just me…

What’s your greatest regret so far?