Size 4 Jeans

Let me ask you something: Are you ever really “you”? Do you ever really show your true face to the world, I mean your deep down, “this is the uncensored me,” raw and open you? Does anybody?

I think the answer everyone would like to give is yes, but the honest one is no. Are there times when you’d like to say or do something, but don’t for fear of how others will react? I think that everyone has moments like that, and that means you’re not giving out the real you. I’m not necessarily saying that this is a bad thing, just pointing out that I’m not sure anyone in today’s world really shows their true self all the time.

If you show your raw and uncensored self to the world, you have to be prepared for the reactions you get, and not let them affect you. I only know one person who claims that she is like this and that’s my mother, and she’s one of the most unhappy people I’ve ever known. I don’t know if her unhappiness stems from a complete inability to connect with anyone or whether the inability to connect is because she’s extremely critical of the world and just about everything in it, from my father on outward, but there it is. And I’m not sure she really operates that way all the time anyway, no matter what she says. Read the rest of this entry »

My husband and I attended his company’s Christmas party in December. It was one of those parties in a nice hotel that started with a cocktail hour and went on with a buffet dinner, and dancing afterwards. The “dress” for the evening was suit and tie for the men, and evening wear for the women, so it was a fine excuse for me to purchase a new dress, have my hair done, and generally be frivolous.

Aside from my own frivolity, I find parties like this to be completely stupid and pointless, and the only reason I go is because my husband is high enough in the company hierarchy that he feels we need to be there, for some completely mysterious reason that I, not having a management degree, don’t understand. Every year, he calls me from the office in mid-November and says “Do you want to go to the Christmas party?” and I say “Why are you asking me this?” Since he feels we need to be there, it’s pretty silly to ask me if I want to go, especially when he knows the answer is a resounding “no!”

What’s wrong with parties like this? Here comes my soapbox recitation: Firstly, every one that I’ve ever been to is “buffet style.” Yuck! Just…YUCK! Even if the food is marginally good, by the time you stand around in the buffet line at least once and haul your plate(s) full of food back to your table it’s more than likely cold, and really, is the food ever better than “marginally good” to begin with? And if the food isn’t marginally good at serving temperature, it’s going to be downright awful cold. And then there’s the issue of touching the same serving utensils that 100 other people have touched whilst filling your plate, and then sitting down to eat your food. Sure, you could head for the restroom to wash your hands between filling your plate and sitting down to eat, but that provides even more time for the food on your plate to chill.

Secondly, assuming you’re lucky enough to be seated with people who have anything interesting to say, the tables at parties of this nature are too large for comfortable conversation with your tablemates, since the tables tend to be round and seat 10-12 people. Even with everyone rubbing elbows like they usually are when cutting their meat, a round table that seats 10-12 in any comfort at all is large enough that talking to anyone not sitting right next to you is a chore, and usually requires raising your voice or even (dare I say) shouting to be heard. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s rare that I pick up a fashion/beauty magazine these days. I just don’t have the time for it, and don’t get much out of them anymore anyway. Once in a while (like once a year) I’ll pick up something like Elle if I’m traveling by plane and just want some fluff to read on the way. I used to read them all the time; Seventeen, Cosmo, Bazaar, Vogue, Vanity Fair. They all found their way into my mailbox at one time or another when I was younger.

I remember feeling like I wasn’t pretty when I was younger, and I had really poor self esteem from the time I was a teenager until I was in my early thirties. I have to say that I think the media and magazines contributed to the problem. Looking at all those perpetually beautiful people in magazines and movies and on TV, I thought I’d never measure up. My mother never understood what the problem was, and never tried to as far as I could tell then or now.

I don’t remember ever having the kind of conversations with my mother that I have with my own daughter about why the magazines and movies and TV aren’t real, and how those people don’t really look like that off the camera, because the photos are all airbrushed and Photoshopped to make perfection seem real. Frankly, I think my mother was jealous of me because I was thin and she wasn’t, and she never wanted to have children anyway (so she’s repeatedly told me), so maybe that was part of the reason for her attitude.

I never thought I was fat when I was younger though, not even when I looked at all the models in the magazines. I was at least sensible enough to realize that “fat” just wasn’t anything close to what I was. In fact, I wished for more curves, because “sexy” to me was a Victoria’s Secret model, and I had bones, not curves and no breasts to speak of at all. I was a stick until I had kids, and I didn’t have any breasts until I could afford to fix that problem with a trip to the plastic surgeon when I was 30. Read the rest of this entry »

Volunteerism is so important in today’s world. I can’t even begin to think of all the people in the world who would suffer were there no volunteers to give their time and skills to help. Some organizations wouldn’t exist at all if no one stepped up to lend a hand and others have volunteers that do the work of twenty because there’s no one else and the need doesn’t go away. Why then, do more people not give their time?

I can give you one major reason: because some people out there think it’s okay to treat volunteers like dirt on their shoes, to be walked on and wiped off at the first opportunity. I’m all for doing your absolute best when you say you’ll do something, whether you’re getting paid for it or not. That being said, everyone makes mistakes, and there is usually more that needs to be done than anyone has time for, but the people who are not volunteering to help in any way at all have very little right to criticize anything, and no right to any non-constructive criticism.

Most importantly, if you have constructive criticism that you think will help the organization or the process, presenting it to the volunteer privately is the best way to go; sending your complaints out in a mass email to everyone in the organization is sure to alienate people, and will probably make you look the fool in the long run. Part of the issue may be the fact that it’s far easier to go off on someone in an email than it is in person. In an email, you can say what you want, and the fear of how they’ll respond is diminished, if it was ever there at all.

Volunteers aren’t always asking for gushing praise and thanks, though that never hurts either. But if you’re not willing to pitch in and help out, don’t tell the volunteer how to do the job (that they’re doing for free, remember), and especially don’t do it in such a way as to be obvious about the fact that you are trying to make that volunteer look stupid. It’s put up or shut up time, folks.

Are teenagers worse today than they were 20 years ago? What I really want to know is what we’ve done wrong, that we have a teenager who thinks the world owes her everything, just because she breathes. She’s always just one step away from being hateful because she can’t have something she wants.

Example 1: She’s been begging (okay, most of the time it’s more like demanding) for us to take her skiing for ages. My husband finally caves in, and makes arrangements for a ski week, including lessons for everyone (except me; I don’t ski and don’t want lessons either). She said she wanted to learn to snowboard, and my husband needs more skiing lessons and my youngest hasn’t ever skied at all. After the plans are firmly in place, the announcement is made, but the teenager isn’t happy because the trip is not taking her to Switzerland! So fine, she won’t go. She can stay home with me and eat frozen food. Whatever.

Example 2: She dropped her digital camera, which she’s never kept in a case despite the fact that we made sure that she got to pick out the “perfect” case for it when it was new. After dropping it (and probably due in part to all the prior abuse), it didn’t work anymore, and she expected us to just lay down the credit card to buy her a new one, post haste. “But what am I supposed to do without a camera?” she says. WTF?

This kid has a serious problem understanding the difference between rights and privileges. “Rights” in this family are: a place to live, food to eat, clothing to wear. This does not mean that I have to buy special food, like applesauce in single serving tubs (because she’s too lazy to open a jar and put the applesauce into a dish) or special protein water, or buy her fancy designer clothing that she likes and just “has to have.” The food and clothing just have to fuel and cover her body, respectively. If we’re nice enough (or can afford) to buy her special food and clothing, that’s a privilege.

Going skiing anywhere is a privilege, which is clearly not understood either. I soooo appreciate the school she went to in 8th grade that decided skiing was “team building” and made it a required part of the curriculum to send my child on the class trip to Switzerland that year. Read the rest of this entry »

So I’ve finally given up and hired someone to clean the house. I’ve always said that we’re not dirty, just cluttered, but lately it’s edging closer to dirty, especially in the bathrooms and kitchen. Problem is, I HATE to clean. Yeah, cleaning is one of those other words that gets a HATE in capitals tacked on in front, so you just have to DWI (Deal With It).

I can always think of something else to do besides clean house, and it really takes no effort whatsoever to get on with something else entirely when faced with cleaning the bathroom. Add to that the fact that it takes about 30 seconds for the rest of the people in this house to dirty it up again, and there’s just no hope of ever turning me into my grandmother. My wonderful grandmother, may she rest in peace, LOVED to clean. Okay, maybe she didn’t love it (though she sure did it a lot), but maybe that was just because it gave her something else to be a martyr about. However it truly was with her, her house was always clean, and she was well and truly over set when she got to the point where she keep the house to her satisfaction any longer, because she was just too old.

Well, I’m not THAT old, not even close, but there are some cleaning tasks that my hands, arms and back just don’t handle well anymore. My hands and forearms are weak due to chronic tenosynovitis, and any really strenuous or repetitive action (think scrubbing sinks and bathtubs to remove lime deposits or stovetops to remove whatever’s been baked on) and then my hands hurt and I can’t do the things I LIKE to do. Ha, sorry, not going to go there. As for the back, well, vacuuming is okay, but bending over scrubbing bathtubs and/or floors doesn’t make it either.

There you have it, in a nutshell: why I don’t go out of my way to clean. But then there’s the guilt. Read the rest of this entry »

“Did you miss us?” This from my husband when he comes home after an absence of three whole days. He took my oldest daughter on a weekend holiday and I stayed home with the youngest. Frankly, no, I didn’t miss them, and I said exactly that just as he said “lie.” In other words, he knows perfectly well that I didn’t miss them, but expects me to lie about it, like it’s some sort of abnormality that I didn’t miss anybody. After I said “no,” his voice dropped and octave and his face fell. What the heck?

You know, this has nothing do do with whether I love them or not, because everyone can use a break now and then without feeling guilty about not missing someone because they’re not around. I thoroughly enjoyed their weekend absence for various reasons. Let’s see, the kids weren’t arguing because only one of them was here, I didn’t have to fix big meals because he wasn’t here, I had the bed to myself sans the oh-so-soothing symphony of his snoring, and I had a break from teenager attitude and demands. What’s not to enjoy?

We go through this every time one of us is out of the house overnight which is just ludicrous. It’s not that I don’t like being around my husband and family, but I certainly don’t pine away for them when they’re not around, even if it’s for a couple of weeks. Maybe if I could ship the kids off to grandma for the entire summer, or if my husband would take a job in Singapore for a year I might get to the missing point, but probably not too quickly. I mean, you miss people when they’re gone, like moved away or dead or something like that, not when they go on a jaunt for a weekend.

Sometimes I feel like he must have married the wrong girl, because I am sooo not dependent enough to suit him. I like being alone, thinking my own thoughts, and I don’t get much of that alone thing these days. My creativity levels were soaring this weekend, and still are for that matter, though I wonder how long it’ll last now that life is “back to normal.” And of course, if he decides that I’m irritated because he’s acted like a sap because I said that I didn’t miss them, then he’ll just say he knows how I am, and it doesn’t bug him, it’s no big deal and all that. But we both know which is the real lie here, don’t we?

**P.S. I had planned a different post for today, but then this irritation came up and the whole post was running screaming through my head, so I finally let it find its way to the screen. I’ll get to that whole “Size 4″ thing later…