Package Deals

Is there anything you can buy with condoms that isn't embarrassing?!

I needed to buy some - for the first time in my life, I do believe! but not, as it happens, for myself - so I went to Walgreen's, and brought Anna with me for, um, protection. Because no one will snicker if I am accompanied by a small, adorable child. Right?

But everything else I needed to pick up while we were there seemed like the worst possible thing to buy in conjunction with a giant economy pack (oh, we aren't taking any chances) of Trojans.

A robot action figure for Anna's friend's birthday party next weekend - d'oh! And we're out of toilet paper - d'oh!! And some, ah, feminine-type medication my doctor told me to get yesterday. D'oh!!! Anna was behaving very well, so I told her she could get some candy. She chose a giant lollipop. D'OH!!!

Fortunately there's nothing remotely suggestive about the package of frozen corn dogs I picked up for the kids to have for dinner tonight while I'm out with friends.

Maybe I'll bring the condoms with me. What the hell.

Cleavage

TMI alert!

Like that's going to stop anybody.

I was a bit of an early bloomer. By the time I was ten years old, I was reasonably chesty. By the time I was twelve, I was perhaps unreasonably chesty. Toss in a few breastfed babies and the fact that when I gain weight, that's the first place it goes, and... well, you get the picture.

My sisters both grew up to be A-cups, and they are pissed.

The thing is, female body image being what it is, and general, non-gender-specific human insecurity about the things that make you, um, stand out, I was always pretty self-conscious about this particular portion of my anatomy. It took a long time for me to get comfortable with it. Well - I'm not entirely comfortable, actually. But you know what? Men seem to like them, I've noticed. So I go with it. Tastefully, so to speak.

Today is the first day of my second week on the new job. I'm in a foul mood to begin with. As much as the old job pissed me off at times, I'd been there for two years, and it wasn't the worst job in the world (we all know what that was). I'd made lots of friends, I have some great memories (NO PUNS) and it was a fun, relaxed environment in a lot of ways, as long as you didn't mind the fact that everything you did was completely pointless. So even though this job is (presumably) a better fit for me, a better division to be in, and the work is substantially more rewarding, I'm terribly homesick. Plus I just called an end to - something we won't go into. Plus I am extremely unhappy about Romeo. Plus Bill Gates is running a little behind, so PMS is absolutely kicking my ass right now. Plus I forgot to bring my thermos of coffee this morning. Plus it's cold and wet and gray and depressing out.

And now, for the punchline, my new supervisor calls me into her office this morning to tell me that my cleavage violates office dress policy. How mortifying is that?! I was so upset, I wasn't even tempted to snicker when she used the phrase "nip this in the bud." (She really did!)

She didn't mention it specifically, but she gave me a copy of the written dress code, and apparently toe rings and ankle bracelets and big dangly earrings are out, too. "This sucks!" I wailed to a friend, "they're going to turn me into a dowdy middle-aged woman!"

"Yes," he said.

So I'm going to have to go joylessly shopping for some boring clothes. Could I file for discrimination if I can't wear something that someone else could get away with, just because of the way I'm built?

Goddamn it. This sucks. Anyway, I'm done. At least I should be good on web traffic for a while.

For the Amusement of Strangers

My sister Margie and I grabbed a quick bite at Taco Cabana today, over by Burnet and 183. It was midafternoon, and not many other people were in the restaurant. And we were talking very frank girl talk, and I did notice after a while that the two guys a couple of tables over from us were being completely silent.

Well, it's good to bring a little happiness into the life of a stranger.

Margie was telling me how she was just at Mount Bonnell the other night with this guy she really likes, but he has a girlfriend. Still, apparently he's willing to hang out with her in a city park at 3am, so who knows how long that's going to last.

"We found some guy's cell phone there," she said. "Just lying on the ground. We used it to make a bunch of crank calls."

She's actually my half sister.

I reminded her of the time she lost her cell phone near the hike and bike, and a jogger found it, and called the first person in her address book - Beth. And he waited there until I arrived to pick it up. And as he handed me the phone, I noticed that her tagline at the top of the screen was "Chicken Fucker," which he didn't comment on, and neither did I, because what can you really say about that?

So wouldn't karma dictate, I asked, that she track down the guy whose phone she had found and give it back to him?

"Oh, we got it to him," she said, picking idly at a scab on her palm. "He was really happy! We just crank-called a bunch of people in his address book first."

"What happened to your hand?" I asked her.

"Oh," she said, "I scraped it up on Mount Bonnell, trying to get loose when I caught my foot in a crack in a rock. I was like this," and she demonstrated, lifting one leg above her, "and as if that weren't bad enough I was wearing a skirt..."

If the guys at the next table were laughing, I couldn't hear them over myself. "And you were with this guy you have a big crush on?!"

"Plus I was having my period," she went on. "So I'm there with my foot over my head and my skirt around my waist and a big pad saying, 'Turn around! Turn around!'"

We're different, Margie and I. I'm pretty sure that if that happened to me, I would just write off the crush and never see him again. True love isn't everything. But she seems okay with it.

I expect the guys at the next table were impressed.

We Have Problems

Do you labor under delusions of adequacy? Is your self-esteem too robust? Are you plagued by an overabundance of disposable income? Get thee to a bike shop!

My old bike, secured with only a cable lock, got stolen out of the carport. So I’ve been parking the new one in Katie’s room. It’s messy enough in there that I didn’t think she’d really notice. Possibly she hasn’t, but this morning I found some of her unmentionables draped across it; so I went shopping for a good solid U-lock today.

I walked into the bike shop, declined the assistance of a few very polite, but distressingly lithe employees, and located a U-lock. So far so good. But I also wanted new pedals, because the ones that came on my bike don’t have any holes in them, so you can’t mount toe clips. I mean, you could. You’d just need a working power drill, which I don’t have. I figured it was easier just to get a new pair.

That was my first mistake.

Ten minutes browsing the shop and not seeing anything should have told me, right there, to just purchase my lock and leave quietly. Oh, sure, they had pedals. They had clipless, lightweight, racing-caliber pedals, lots of different kinds of them, starting out around $75 a pair. Alongside these were shoes, cleat systems, cleat mounts, cleat covers, a full range of sleek biking apparel, and bicycle helmets that looked like they might actually be flattering.

Mine just makes me look like a well-ventilated mushroom.

Finally, shyly, I asked one of the godlike beings for help. “Do you have any, you know, just regular pedals?” I asked. “The ones that came on my bike won’t accept toe clips.”

“Well, we don’t actually sell toe clips here,” he said. Of course not. Toe clips probably add at least three ounces to the weight of your bike!

“I already have the clips,” I went on. “It’s just that the pedals on my bike don’t take them, or I’d have to drill holes.”

“Hmm. Okay,” he replied, “I think we might have some here, somewhere; let me look around,” and vanished in a blur of brightly-colored Lycra.

He circled the shop for a minute or two, then went outside, and spent another few minutes actually removing a pair of pedals from a bike chained on display in front. He brought them in. “We have this pair,” he told me; “they keep getting put on some of the bikes for test rides. They’re flat so you can slide your feet into the clips, and have special tabs for the straps to mount. They’re $30.”

I took the pedals in my hand. If I’d been browsing, and found these on the shelf, I’d have looked at the price and put them back down. Not that they aren’t worth the money: strong, but extremely lightweight, slim and efficiently designed. But I don’t need that. I’m not worried about minimizing weight. My bike has a kickstand, which I use, and like. Do you have any idea how these people feel about kickstands??

But he’d gone to all that trouble, and I was much too embarrassed to say I wanted something cheaper, which would entail confessing that I’m really not a very serious biker. So I bought them.

Problem solved!