It's Whoreticulture Friday! Issue 22

Whoreticulture: The industry and science of whores and whore-related topics. Whoreticulturists work and conduct research in the disciplines of OB-GYNery, Brazilian waxers and shavers, adultery, personal hygiene mavens and easy women. The word is composite, from two words, whore, from Greek meaning "harlot" or "dear", and the word culture. Like NPR's Science Friday, Whoreticulture Friday exists to educate and spark discussion on the science of Whorology. Whoreticulture Friday is not for children. Or squeamish people. Or Mother-In-Laws.

Today's topic: Me and My Period - We're Like *This*.

Every month, sometime around the second week near Tuesday, I'm reminded of why I love being a woman.  I'm reminded that I have internal organs that are designed for baby-making, which I have no plans to use.  It's sort of like if my light blue strapless satin TD4 prom dress from 1987 crawled out of the Rubbermaid tub in the basement around the 15th of every month, came upstairs, kicked me in the gut over and over and over again until I started hemorrhaging, and said "...and there will be more of that every month until you decide to use me again."

Men don't get to experience the joy that is womanhood.  They never have dull abdominal cramps, the sneaking sensation that they are bleeding through their work pants, or the thrill of carrying an economy-size box of Super Plus tampons, a bag of Overnight Maxi Pads with Wings, a bag of Lightdays pantyliners, a king sized Kit Kat, a large bottle of Aleve and a large box of wine through the Express Lane at their local grocery store.

My first experience with a period was before I had one - watching TV with my dad or some guy friends, and seeing Cathy Rigby come on to promote Stayfree pads.  Periods are so unobtrusive that you can do a handstand in a leotard and spread your legs comfortably!!  We would all sit in awkward silence, looking at the ceiling, and hope the next ad wouldn't be for Massengil douches.

 Suggestion:  If you need comfort, 

get off the beam, out of that leotard 

and into a gallon of Ben and Jerry's 

Triple Fudge Brownie Chunk.

Today, a friend sent the new Kotex ad to me.  I hadn't seen this brilliant work, and I think it sums up how women have felt about tampon commercials for years.  I suspect a woman wrote this campaign.  (NOTE:  You can pause the music in the playlist on the sidebar.  But I couldn't resist Leona Lewis and her nonstop bleeding today.)

"I really like the ads on TV because they use that blue liquid

....and I'm like 'Oh!  That's what's supposed to happen."

Who hasn't had their period and felt they've been deprived of the pleasure of these obvious menstrual cycle activities?

• horseback riding
• competitive swimming
• running on the beach
• extreme yoga or kickboxing

Not everyone is happy with these ads.  The site Feministing.com complained about them, saying the ads didn't go far enough:

"I guess period control ads aren't just euphemism-happy so as not to offend our delicate lady sensibilities or burst the illusions of man folks. You actually can't say the "vagina" word in an ad for a product that goes in your vagina. And two out of three network censors still feel icky when they hear "down there."

No offense, Feministing, but I REALLY don't want to HEAR the word "vagina" on TV.  I don't.  I'm not a prude, I promise - just look at the Whoreticulture Friday posts.  However, I have a list of words I don't want to hear while watching TV with my kids, or anyone else for that matter:

• vagina
• penis
• erectile dysfunction
• urinary anything
• douche
• feminine odor
• special feeling

That said, here are a few of the tampon ads I like:

 This actually happens to me some months.

Wow. That must be a REALLY good tampon. But isn't that why we do Kegels? To avoid clapping? I'm getting to an age where I don't want the clap. After all, loose lips sink ships.

(A quick "RALLY!" to my Fremont homegirls!  Check me!!) 

Happy Whoreticulture Friday! Have a great weekend!

Marble Poundcake Mullet, Part 2

If you are new to the blog, I'm sorry.  My mom thinks I'm funny, but she's a functioning alcoholic, and they think everyone is funny.  I'm kidding.  My mom is a meth addict.

I am a low maintenance person.  I don't wear much makeup, or shower every day, or even shave my legs during the coldest winter months.  This makes me sound more "clinically depressed" than "low-maintenance", but really, I would rather get another chapter read in my book than apply makeup.  And I'm married, so the farce is over.

The one thing I do get a little uptight about is my hair.  I'm not even talking about MY maintenance of my hair, I'm talking about the quarterly upkeep of my hair by a paid professional.  Left to my own devices, I would just put my salt and pepper mane into a clip or a ponytail and be done with it, but I have children to embarrass with my need to look younger and listen to their music and throw gang signs at them when I kick them to the curb at middle school in the mornings.

So spring, summer, fall and winter, I fork over about $150 for the ability to convince myself that I look less gray and more tragically hip.  I also have my Frida Kahlo lip waxed so I can walk around town with a swollen pink mustache, convenient when I want people to avoid me.  As I explained in too much detail yesterday, my hair ended up with drastic layers cut into it, with the end result looking like a Marble Poundcake Mullet.  Like Billy Ray Cyrus and Rachel Green from Friends had a baby they didn't like very much.  But how do you tell the sweet gal who just did this to you that you don't like it?  What exactly is she going to to about it?  The hair is gone.  You just think, "It will grow back, and I can wear a wig or some Jessica Simpson hair extensions."

But when Oldest Daughter got home, she called me Two Tone, and that is when I lost my shit.  I called my stylist and asked for a mulligan.  She told me to come in today at 11:30 a.m.

Tell me you see it -

Blondie on the top, Brownie on the bottom.

(And I notice the shower curtain rod is getting rusty.)

It was awkward, and she couldn't have been sweeter about it.  I said, "Hi!  I bet you think I'm completely psychotic!" and she gave me a nice smile and patted my arm and said "Come on back".  We went to the back room where the women are incrementally blonder or redder or caramel-er and everyone talks smack about Dancing With the Stars or That Asshole Jesse James/Tiger Woods or the Hawaii/Florida/Scottsdale/Mexico Trip from which they've just returned.  I read a book called "Stuff White People Like" and thought about my upcoming vacation extravaganza to Dayton, Ohio.

As she foiled my hair, I read my book.  I realized I'd read about 50 pages and she wasn't done.  I started to panic.  Was she going to turn me into Pam Anderson just to make a point?  How angry was she?  How much Reynolds Wrap was going to die because I have an aversion to two-tone hair, Bump-its, and Jersey Shore?  I tried to start talking in apologetic tones about what a pain in the ass I am, and she shushed me, smiling.  Oh no.  This was going to be bad.

As she was rinsing my hair out, I thought, "What do I pay for this?  I've taken up her time.  Do I compensate?  Was it her mistake in the first place, or mine for not saying anything yesterday when I was here?  Was it my turn to drive for orchestra this morning?  I have to get out of here."

I said "Don't blow me out, okay?" and then thought it sounded sexual, and while I don't actually want her to blow me, I don't want her to think I'm rejecting her color AND her sexuality.  "Um, I mean, I don't need it dried, you don't need to style it..." and she looked at me incredulously.  "Really?  You just want to walk out with it wet?"  I didn't want to be a bigger pain than I already was, and if the color was off this time, too bad for me, because another roll of Reynolds Wrap and chemicals would make my hair fall out.  "Yep!  I brought a clip!"  I'm sure she thinks I'm the biggest soccer mom in history - I'm leaving this nice salon and spa, and insisting on walking out with wet hair in a clip.  Fashion Don't.

All day in my fancy clip -

zig zag fuzzy hair, but it's uniform in color!

Vogue Hands automatically give me style.

She fixed my hair, but not my mental issues.  She just smiled and said, "You're done, you can go!" and I said, "Can I at least pay you for a Drive By?" which is actually called a Drive Thru and means you get your color touched up for a low price in between appointments, but she probably really thought I wanted her to drive past my house and shoot at me because I was so clearly freaking out about making her re-do my do.  And I had made it apparent I wasn't one of her "Easy" or "Stable" or "Coherent" clients.  "Nope!  You're fine!"  I left her a $20 tip and the sense she should make herself look booked before my next appointment in July.

But I still have my hot clip, and my mojo.

And you can't take that away from me.

I am also wearing my Jen Lancaster pearls - not an appropriate topic for Whoreticulture Friday, so I'll address which authors I will be stalking next week in Monday's post, and tell you about the THREE e-mails I've received from The Governor of Jennsylvania in the past few months! 

Thanks for your support during this difficult time.  And Mom, I'm sorry.  You are not a meth addict either.  I'm an entertainer, not an historian.

The Achy Breaky Two Tone Snooky Do

CONFESSION:  I am a minivan driving, school volunteering, Starbucks drinking, child extra-curricular event attending mother of three over forty.  WTF happened?

Last thing I remember was getting initiated into a sorority in college and going to a LOT of parties, and then I vaguely remember dating this guy because he seemed like someone who would really piss off my dad, and then SURPRISE! the joke's on me because I married him and bore three of his children and here we are in this house that doesn't clean itself with that minivan parked at the curb.  Whoosh!  Take cover, Pa, it's a tornado in the trailer park!

It's no secret that I want to believe I am still in my late twenties.  I may not be able to control my varicose veins or my batwings or the family gobbler forming under my chin or the Three-Baby Pooch that rests on the top of my low-slung jeans, but I can control my fashion sense, my taste in music, and my hair.

I confess, I am still stuck in the Gap.  My uniform is Gap jeans or khakis with various versions of the Gap t-shirts or western shirts.  These clothes say to me, "Hey, you could pass for a teaching assistant in college!  You could be in a bar!  There's no way you drive a minivan!"  when what they are really saying is, "Guess the make and model of my minivan?"  Therefore, I have to occasionally mix it up with a funky thrift store vintage shirt or something from Anthopologie.  I guess what I'm trying to say is my wardrobe is confusing.  Like my personality.

I listen to college bands.  I have always had an insanely emotional attachment to music, and there is nothing better than finding the perfect song to express what you're feeling.  It's like someone else 'gets it'.  It never hurts if the lead singer or guitarist is cute.  I love me a good guitarist crush.

 Flavor of the month:

Damian Kulash, from Ok Go.  

He's 35, so it isn't TOTALLY cougar.

I plan on being one of those old women who wear their hair long forever.  It's all I got.  I will let it gracefully go gray, after I am well past 55.  For now, those suckers are getting covered.  I'm a pretty low maintenance gal, but I do spend a chunk of change every 12 weeks or so getting fake color put in my hair.  I want to look sassy, not brassy.  I know it doesn't look like I was born with it, I'm not THAT delusional, but I want it to look like I care about something when I have the jelly donut stains down the front of my Gap t-shirt.

Today, I went in for the quarterly transformation, and my stylist (who is a lovely, perky, cute blonde twenty something who is going to Mexico next week for a wedding as a single, unattached fun-loving home-owning person...what was I talking about?) talked me into doing some layers.  SOME layers.  I love her dearly, but two hours later I left with Billy Ray Cyrus on my head - the light side AND the dark side.  And no one wants to see the dark side of Billy Ray.  When I saw her cutting some big chunks out of my previously unlayered hair, I had visions of Rachel Green from Friends, and some quick math told me that The Rachel hadn't been in style for at least 10 years.

When they spin that chair around and you face the music, if you don't like it, do YOU say something?  I've been seeing this girl for over three years, I don't want to hurt her feelings.  And there is a part of me saying, "They can't glue it back on, honey, just pick up your dignity, pay the bill and get the hell out."  I went home and tried to flatten out the Rachel bump and reduce the look of the Mom Mullet, but to no avail.  Then I looked in the mirror at the back of my head.  Oh no.  The dark side was darker than I thought.  Luke Skywalker had the crown and Darth Vader had the ends and they were fighting for dominance somewhere in the middle.  

Vader layer:  "Yes!  Yes, give in to your hate of the hair color!  The force is strong with this color!  Come to the dark side!"

Luke layer:  "No!  I will never give in to you!  I want to go to the light!  I'm looking into the light!"

Creepy old lady from Poltergeist:  "Don't look into the light!  Stay away from the light!"

Almond Joy commercial:  "Sometimes you feel like a nut..."

After looking at my hair too long, I decided I was being ridiculous.  I worked all afternoon, but the whole time, Billy Ray Cyrus was singing in my head.  Ross was trying to date me, and then break up with me.  Darth and Luke were fighting, with the Emperor cackling in the background.  Finally, the kids got home from school.

YD:  "Mommy, did you get your hair cut?"

ME:  "Yes."

YD:  "Oh."

Son:  "I like it Mother.  Can I have chips and salsa?"

OD:  "Um, it's like...two tone.  Did you get it colored in two shades?"

My middle schooler called me Two Tone.  Oh my God, I had to get back to blonde unattached home-owner before she left for Mexico, because what if she never came back and only she knows the chemical formula for the color in the Luke Skywalker side of my hair?

My hair is now officially bipolar.

And a pseudo-mullet.

I called extremely cute stylist and told her I was worried about the Dark Side.  She told me that it's always hard to see the highlights in the lower layers.  We sat in silence for a moment, and then I got some Mom Balls and said, "Yeah, well I need the layers to match."  I am scheduled to go in at 11:30 today, and now I'm even more afraid.  What if I've offended her?  What if, to make her point, she goes over the top and makes me really light on the bottom layer?  What if it actually tips the balance so the top half of my hair is Joan Jett and the bottom half is Blondie?  Will I love Rock n' Roll, or will I be in Rapture?

What have I done?

No Green Eggs and Trichonosis Ham, Sam I Am

It's ironic that I joked about my mom and the undercooked ham this week.  There is a commandment, you know - Honor Thy Mother and Thy Father.  Today was divine retribution.

The day started as most weekend days do around here - CH and I try to sleep in, and the kids usually do their best to make sure that doesn't happen.  We're sort of awake, but in that dozing state when your bed has never felt more comfortable.  Youngest Daughter wanted cereal, and she was alarmed that the Easter Bunny hadn't made it to our home.  Dang!  I forgot to put out the Easter baskets!

I don't think YD actually believes in the Easter Bunny - she believes in candy, and she is willing to back up whatever vehicle may be delivering said treats.  If there was a Flag Day Muskrat who delivered candy, she would be the biggest Muskrat fan you've ever met.  It is her way.  And she will notice if her scheduled candy hasn't arrived.

Flag Day Muskrat, y'all!

SPOILER ALERT:  There is no Easter Bunny.  I forgot to put the Easter baskets out, and so I had to go with my backup plan...sneak them around to the front of the house and leave them on the front steps.  I'm in my yoga pants and Mount Rushmore t-shirt, sans bra (YOU'RE WELCOME NEIGHBORS), and no less than three people yell "HAPPY EASTER JULIE!!!!" while traveling past our house on their way to church.  Those well-meaning Christians nearly blew my cover.

I snuck to the front door, deposited my goods, and crept back around to the back door.  I walked in and asked YD to get the Sunday newspaper, and lo and behold, the Easter Bunny managed to make it, even if the parents slept in!  First Easter activity down, one more to go - the meal.

I fired up the oven and got out the ham, but I made a fatal error - I glazed the ham before I cooked it.  There it sat in the oven, in a blanket of delicious glaze, which made the heat impossible to get in and cook the damn thing.  Three hours later, the center of my ham stood at 90 degrees instead of the desired 140.  The delicious potatoes with the cornflake topping was done.  Biscuits - done.  Green beans - done.  But the trichinosis laden ham?  Not done.  I was in a quandry - do we eat the other food while it's hot and to hell with the ham, or wait out the other food until it is cold but the ham is done?    I went with Ham Waiting, and broke open a bottle of chardonnay.  Thirty minutes and one empty bottle of chardonnay later, it was all serenity.  Who cares if the meal is ruined!?!  At least we are all together.

 Dinner's ready, kids!

I am Ma'am

Ma'am I am.

I have baked green beans and Trichinosis ham

Would you eat it on a helicopter?

Would you eat it with the aid of a doctor?

I would not, could not

With your taters

Can't we just get dinner catered?

I could not would not

With my bro or sis

I do not want Trichinosis!

Would you eat it on Sunday?

Would you eat it with chardonnay?

I would not could not eat it Sunday!

And I am not of legal drinking age!

I will not eat green beans and Trichinosis Ham!

I will not eat it, Ma'am I am!

Damn!  Damn!  Said Ma'am I am.  

They will not eat the friggin' ham.

They will not eat it any which way

I guess I'll serve Trix Easter Sunday.

We ate and talked about God.  YD wanted to know if when you get married, the husband becomes God.  CH seemed to be smirking.  The ghost of Betty Freidan put down her scotch and soda in shock, and then looked at me like, "DO something, you twit!"  It turned out that while I was tucking myself into a heap of sour cream and cheese potatoes with the cornflake topping, I  missed the actual statement, which was that YD understood God to be the man who MARRIES people, not the actual man being married.  Close call, because I was mentally preparing to whisk her away to the Gloria Steinem Fish Bicycle Camp for Wayward Girls.

The rest of the day passed without event.  I stole most of the Bunny Eggs on Animal Crossing on the Wii, we plowed through leftovers, and made ourselves pre-diabetic on candy.  All in all, a perfect day.

Hope your Easter weekend was glorious, and have a terrific week!  Hello Spring!

It's Holyculture Friday! Issue 1

Holyculture: The industry and science of holiness and Christ-related topics. Holiculturists work and conduct research in the disciplines of church attendance, social hour, greeters, favorite Sons and virginal women. The word is composite, from two words, Holy, meaning "sacred", and the word culture. Like NPR's Science Friday, Holyculture Friday exists to educate and spark discussion on the science of Christology. Holyculture Friday is absolutely for children. Because Jesus loves the little children.  All the children of the world, actually.

Today's topic: The Seven Deadly Sins of Easter.

I know today is Friday, and you 'Miss-Jackson-if-you're-nasty' people expect me to post something naughty, but DUDE.  It is Good Friday.  God notices when you blow off Good Friday.  I only needed to see "The Passion of the Christ" once to feel like Jesus can get a little respect today, so today is Holyculture Friday, and Whoreticulture Friday will return to its regularly scheduled programming next week.  (Maybe I'll talk about 'The Shocker' next week to make it up to you.) 

Yesterday, April Fools Day, I posted six lies and a truth.  Some of you thought I posted all true stories as an April Fools joke, and in retrospect, I wish I would've thought of it!  You clever monkeys.  However, one was wrong - my mother did not poison the Mennonites with undercooked pork, and even if she had, they would've been too polite to bring it up later.  And yes, my dog Mandy really did gut that rabbit on Easter Sunday.  Ish.

This Good Friday story is actually a reprint of a column I wrote a few years ago and ran in my small local newspaper, back in the day when I had a regular newspaper column called "Diary of a Mad Housewife".  Love your local newspapers!

The Seven Deadly Sins of Easter - (I think this ran in 2004)

As I look upon another Easter, with the hundred or so little foil wrappers laying around the house and the irritating plastic eggs I will find off and on for the next twelve months or so, I've come to realize that Easter has become yet another over-commercialized holiday.  I can see the temptation to go crazy at Christmas, since it is based on the birthday of Jesus.  Who hasn’t gone a little overboard at a birthday party?  Easter, however, seems a bit sacrilege.  Are we really to celebrate Christ’s rising from the dead with huge Hershey bars and a costumed rabbit?

This Easter, my family celebrated in the usual way, full of chocolate and hard-boiled eggs and spilled purple egg dye on the kitchen floor, but it was full of religious implications as well, which I can easily recant for you in the form of the Seven Deadly Sins.

First, we have Envy.  I can tell you that I was really jealous of the kids’ Easter baskets as I was loading them up.  At what age did I stop getting an Easter basket?  My mom was always good for loads of candy, which she stopped giving me around the age of thirteen when I got lippy.  Just to be fair, I got the hubby and myself the 4,000-calorie oversized Symphony bar to set out with the baskets so the kids didn’t think the bunny looked down on us.

Then there is Greed, which I exemplified perfectly as I stole chocolate from the kids baskets even after I devoured most of the Symphony bar myself.  I tell myself the kids don’t need that much chocolate, but let’s be honest – I was on a big-time chocolate binge, kids’ happiness be damned.

Of course, this leads us to Gluttony and Lust.  Need I say more?  One would think the recent Girl Scout Cookie episodes would have toned down my need to feed, but if Mother’s Day involves any food, I will have consumed more calories in three months than there are dollars in the national debt.

For the deadly sin of Pride, I paid the price.  When on assignment to photograph the Living Last Supper at the Methodist Church, I was “with the media.”  I mingled with the disciples, getting their quotes, feeling the power of my pen to make Judas look good and John look bad.  During the recreation of the table scene for pictures, I looked through my lens to get the best shot, and sat down in a pew to get a better angle.  It only took a moment to realize I got the point, literally - I actually sat on Jesus’ thorny crown.  Not many people can say that, but hand to God, it happened, and you can just ask Reverend Alecia Williams.  I have the scars to prove it.

The sin of Anger goes to my son.  He decided during Good Friday services that he needed to drop a nail in the bucket and pray with us, and when he didn’t go, he had a huge conniption in the middle of the Lord’s Prayer.  During the Egg Hunt at the parsonage, he got mad at the Reverend of our church because he was wearing a bunny costume and trying to shake his hand.  What really made him mad was when he was coming down off of his chocolate high during Easter Sunday services and we took him up for communion…he wanted to drink all of the little cups of juice, and when we stopped him, he had a big fit, which many people in the congregation thought was cute, and we thought was humiliating.  He also yelled at the lady sitting next to us that it was NOT a dog on his sweater, it was an ALLIGATOR.  It was a dog, but junkies get confused.

Finally, we come to Sloth, which is what the afternoon of Easter Sunday is all about.  We try to get out and do something, but every time we got active, we were thwarted in our efforts.  I guess all that sitting in church really took it out of us.

And so Easter has passed us by.  I realize now that all of the chocolate I’ve ingested will be my cross to bear in the coming months, but I take comfort in the fact that God wants me to repent, and he will forgive us for all of our sins.  If I could only be so lucky.

Happy Good Friday, everyone, and have a blessed Easter.  See you next week!