Swimsuits

Have you shopped for girl bathing suits lately?

I do not consider myself a prude, like at all.

But we were looking for a couple of one-piece suits my daughter could wear to summer camp, and this was about the most coverage I could find at Target.

Cut-out suits and two-pieces are all over the place, and in tiny sizes. We’re talking miniature versions of sexy adult swimsuits.

No more Victoria’s Secret runway show because our daughters are gonna parade around in those styles by the pool instead, right?

Body confidence should not mean no coverage available.

I’ll be over here looking for the missing pieces of these suits and our societal sensibility.

Middle Age Mom: The store

They sell us youth in a bottle at the beauty supply stores.

But how can you bottle up inexperience and finding your footing? Does the self-consciousness mix with the immature decision-making when you shake the container?

The youth serum should have a lovely pearl sheen but with chunks of worrying what others think. Globs of “if I was better, he would like me back”. Would the self-absorbency sink into your skin or just coat the surface?

Of course, they make a lot of awesome youth creams. Full of motivation and drive and compassion. A youthful desire to change the world. But that’s not for me. Those are for the youngsters.

Hand me a bottle of that Getting Wrinkles, please. Or maybe the Gray Hair is Hot spray.

I’ll even settle for the More Aches, Less Shits Given.

I heard that new perfume Empathy has notes of caring and sharing, but also learning to let go and just breathe and sit together and be.

I want to try on that Speaking with Authority setting spray. And some Call me Ma’am powder.

Know Your Worth eye shadow got great reviews.

Take my money, Middle Age Woman. I’m kicking in your doors and clearing the shelves.

Sketch artist

If any of you ever go missing, and I SEE you kidnapped, please understand you are still royally effed.

My husband and I have been watching the MTV classic Catfish again lately, and on this one episode they brought in a sketch artist to draw a dude a woman saw briefly a couple of times. When they finally found the guy, he looked EXACTLY like the sketch. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

I don’t know what I had for breakfast, and hardly know my name half the time.

I am sure as hell not going to be able to describe the shape of someone’s eyebrows.

Call the FBI and add you to the missing person list. Because this ain’t happening.

Mischief

“There’s no gold in here,” my daughter remarked, peering into the leprechaun trap she left out last night.

This, after she came into our room at the ass crack of dawn “disappointed” that there was just a letter and a chocolate bar, and green crayons making a path, and some green yarn and her doll sitting on its little toilet cuz those mischievous leprechauns.

My daughter was apparently hoping for the mischief to continue downstairs in the form of green footprints and green toilet water and coins and the like.

My husband and I have colds. We feel like balls. We are not about to get all Pinteresty up in here.

At this rate, the mischief next St. Patty’s day might come in the form of no antics at all. Or the unveiling of the leprechauns’ true identity as two tired parents fed up with candy-coated green expectations. 🍀

Change

This is a reminder to you and to me that we probably can’t change people.

We can teach our kids at the risk that they will resent us for the teachings. For lovingly clipping their wings a bit to help them take flight smoothly. But more likely, they will thank us.

And hopefully, by the time they are adults out in the wild, they will have learned. And do better. But for now, we can’t change people.

We can only exist, and speak our hearts, and keep working to be better ourselves.

Fire and Oil

When I came home last night at the end of the work week, I really needed my husband to be excited to see me. If he was, he didn’t show it. He was just tired. And on his phone.

I hoped he’d cooked dinner, cuz he’s the one who cooks in our family. But he didn’t. He was tired.

The kids and I ate whatever. Instead of swallowing my bitterness with the microwaved leftovers, I spewed it all over him, and the kids got splattered as well.

My son asked us please to not get divorced.

We won’t. We are just fire and oil. And our kids are fireworks.

None of us are sand or water.

Our marriage is a blaze, and not smoldering coals. My attraction burns for him in our 15th year of marriage as hot as it always did.

Fire and oil.

This sunny morning as I hurried out the door to my dance class, my husband handed me a breakfast burrito to take with me while he cooked breakfast.

We kissed briefly despite our squabble the night before, and I was gone.

This was, quite literally, the best breakfast burrito I’ve ever tasted. I wondered if I was stoned or something. It was that good.

You wouldn’t have known the burrito would taste that delicious from looking at it. It fell apart when I tried to pick it up.

I had to hold up the sides and shove it in my mouth. Not unlike a 15-year marriage. A little sloppy. A lot delicious. Fire and oil working to perfection.

Filling their cup

I had been hanging onto all these black tea K cups. I bought them for some specific recipe or purpose I can’t recall now.

Today I looked at my little K cup dispenser with all the black tea I never drink, took out every tea K cup but two, and filled the dispenser with yummy off-season holiday coffee K cups.

I will bring the tea K cups to work and set them in the break room for whoever wants them. That someone is not me. But it’s someone. I hope it fills their cup while it no longer fills my dispenser.☕

The purge

I don’t know where I found the motivation to start organizing the churning sea of Legos, shoes, puzzle pieces, Guess Who parts and paper that is my son’s closet.

But before I did the closet, I went through his chest of drawers and threw out all the tiny underwear and socks with no business being there, and even took out the drawers to pull out clothes stuck in the back.

Now he is going through his Pokemon cards to see what he wants to get rid of.

Damn, throwing out/donating stuff feels even better than shopping. It’s just so hard to get started.

Someone please say good job or something.