Bruises

How things have changed since I was growing up, and I'd swear it hasn't been that long.

Katie and I have been sitting around watching TV tonight. It's been that kind of weekend: cleaning like mad, getting the place spic-and-span, just for ourselves. We just had a small turkey roast, some canned sweet potatoes, jellied cranberry, microwave stuffing (yarf!) and apple pie for Thanksgiving dinner. Yesterday was much more satisfactory. We biked to HEB and got potatoes and little filets mignons and had quite a tasty repast. Today we walked to South Congress and did a spot of shopping. Tonight, we biked over to Fran's for cheeseburgers. Much girl talk has ensued; boys, you don't want to know; you'd be terrified, even those of you who have plenty of experience with the wimmens. All I can really tell you is that, if a guy I'm (ahem!) closely entwined with is suddenly deeply engrossed in the TV watching Transformers cartoons, sixteen-year-old Beth is a lot more understanding than sixteen-year-old Katie would be, so I'd invest in a time machine if I were you.

But our closest moment of girl bonding happened when this song came on in an iPod commercial:

"Oh my God," said Katie, "that's totally how it is with guys for me."

I am several years older, which is why I get to buy wine. "That's how it always is with guys," I said, "for all women. Always."

So we immediately paid $0.99 to download the song from iTunes. Oh my gosh, you guys. When I was Katie's age, well, for one thing, no commercial would ever play any song you actually wanted to own, are you effing kidding me?! Do you even remember "Ban with cashmere"?! But if, let's say hypothetically, a commercial did play something good, you'd have to wait till the next day and go to the record store at the mall and buy a CD for $18.99 that contained the song you wanted, along with about thirteen other songs you really didn't.

The times, they are a changing. Now if we could only do something about men.