Wisdom.

Scene from the 4th grade on the classic boys vs. girls argument.

I warned the class that they should be reading quietly, not talking.
R, a girl, informed me: "The boys are the talkative ones."
A, unwilling to accept that kind of treatment, defended his fellow gentlemen. "No! Girls gossip."
I asked, "Girls gossip? What do boys talk about?"
A: "Cars, video games...motorcycles, bikes...game systems."
Alright, that's...a wide range of topics. "And what do girls talk about?"
He shrugged. "I don't know."

Hey, he's still stuck with a view of traditional gender roles. There's time to fix that. But at least he's honest.

Winning line.

The prize-winning, tie-breaking line from R's bachelorette party last week:

(In response to "You're at the grocery store picking up some fruit. You reach for a Golden Delicious apple and a handsome man reaches for the same one. Your hands meet and you say...")

"If it turns out to be poisoned, would you kiss me awake?"

Team Amanda broke the mold, veering away from the dirty and overtly sexual. It was the only way to beat our competitors. AND IT WORKED. I have the prize to prove it.


In other news, we're having another spirit week next week at work and Monday is Jersey Day. We're assuming they mean a sports jersey, right? Not The Jersey Shore? (I can run out for a bump-it if that's the case.)

All the single ladies.

I spent this past weekend in greater Chicago, celebrating the wedding of a lovely friend from high school.
The scavenger hunt during the bachelorette party on Thursday was fun. Despite temperatures in the 40s, Team Amanda (yes my teammate was also named Amanda; total score) cleaned up. The Cheesecake Factory did not disappoint (Godiva chocolate cheesecake, I'm looking at you). But the highlight?
Sketchy pickup lines. The scavenger hunt tiebreaker was to come up with the best pickup line for a given situation. The bride read it to us and chose the winner. Team Amanda. Clearly. Am I proud? Absolutely.
It turned into not only our whole evening, but our whole weekend. We took turns reading a situation and judging the best line. (Dear table of gentlemen next to us, I enjoyed watching your eyes bug out as you clearly eavesdropped. Solitarily yours, Bitter Amanda) After the bachelorette party itself, we were still texting each other lines and searching for the others during the reception when we thought of a good one.

So, allow me to share that first, tie-breaking pickup line situation. The one that started it all. Feel free to share your best lines for it!


Our tiebreaker: You're at the grocery store picking up some fruit. You reach for a Golden Delicious apple and a handsome man reaches for the same one. Your hands meet and you say...



PS: More wedding-related posts to follow.

RE: COTTON ALERT

The Cotton Alert placed on a Saturday sock, missing since December 30th, has been lifted after its recovery early Thursday morning.

The Saturday pair is one of seven sets--a Day of the Week set. During a routine laundry day in late December, one of the Saturday socks went missing. One month later, the sock had still not been located. Searchers suspected the worst. The other half of Saturday's pair was put aside in grief. Each laundry day, the search was halfheartedly renewed, yielding no positive results.

However, things changed early Thursday morning, when a pair of seldom-used pajama pants were apprehended from a local closet. Upon a further search, the long-missing Saturday sock was released from captivity within the confines of the pink fabric.

There appeared to be no damage. At last report, both sock and partner were doing well.

The pair reunites after 4 stressful months.

Skanks have feelings too.

So...one of Tiger's numerous mistresses (the porn star) (is it too ambiguous to say THE porn star? I'm not sure...is there just one?) has come out publicly saying that she'd like to speak to Tiger's wife. Her lawyer said she thought they could clear a lot up.

Really? What on Earth makes this woman think Tiger's wife will want to chat? "Oh, yeah, this is Elin returning a slutty phone call? I wanted to hear all about your side of the skanky affair with my famous husband! Starbucks in 20 minutes?"

Mistresses? Don't get to tell the sob story. They don't get apologies. They don't get sympathy. Not when they're the mistress of a famously married man. (You're a grown-up, you know better than that!)
They get made fun of.

Network television won't broadcast this post, I'm sure.

Tampons are meant for a woman's vagina.

Oh, sorry, did I startle you there? Gentlemen, are you ok? I didn't create a panic, did I?

It just seems to me that someone ought to come out and say it. The sanitary product industry is getting a lot of attention over an ad that was brazen enough to mutter the word "vagina." The ad was rejected and some networks further denied it after vagina was substituted with "down there."
Down there? Even THAT wasn't ok? I'm sorry, are we in 6th grade? Are we going to giggle our way through sex ed during 4th period? Pass notes to each other saying we're "sooo sure that Mrs. So-and-So is qualified to teach us about THAT...it's not like SHE has sex!! LOL"? We're adults; this is hardly acceptable behavior.
It's no wonder I wouldn't buy tampons on my own until late high school. Society doesn't want us to actually talk about it. It's supposed to be our dirty little secret. We can bond over having some chocolate because of the dreaded PMS...we can commiserate when we have cramps. We can even have a public bitchfest when the men in our lives blame everything on our "time of the month." But heaven forbid we engage in an open dialogue.
For years, I've noticed something about print ads for pads and tampons: they're embarrassing. They are full of cutesy metaphors. This overnight pad is in the shape of an umbrella because it will protect you from leaks! It's a recliner because boy, are they comfortable! Then there are the forced attempts at female bonding--like those new ones about "tricking Mother Nature," as if your period is some crafty sorceress out to ruin your beach date. I recall a particularly appalling tampon ad while I was in college. A picture of a tampon surrounded by what looked like paper doll clothes--for your tampon. I believe the point was that the advertised brand of tampons were not fancy and dressed up like other brands--and if you were looking for such qualities, you could go ahead and have craft time with your magazine! One night (which may or may not have involved drinking) I actually went ahead and cut the little dresses and accessories out. A friend stated that I was perhaps the first person to do so, going as far as fitting them to a tampon. It was wholly creepy.
Making me nostalgic for my childhood is hardly a way to sell tampons. It's not like I need much convincing to buy them, or anything.
And television ads...oh my. As if my period has anything to do with riding horses. The TV spot that was discouraged from using anatomical terms was actually all about the embarrassing nature of these ads. Kotex ended up with this spot. It's awesome.

Given that society seems to be rather period-shy, I figure that maybe you just don't know much about it. Maybe you're afraid to ask. So, here we go...
Tampons go in a woman's vagina. They are for her period. Vagina is not a dirty word. (It is also only part of what is "down there" and thus is not what Jennifer Love Hewitt had "vagazzled" ohmygod do not get me started on THAT. JLH needs to stop putting on tampon puppet shows or whatever she's doing and get informed. But that is another blog post for another day.)

Sorry if that upset you, kids.

They don't appear to be in Target.

Where are all the men?

This is a question I ask the universe multiple times each day. Often I'm wondering where the MEN are because I'm surrounded by boys. Toddlers with cell phones. I'm trapped in the movie Big without the giant piano duet. (Please continue to enjoy my topical references from the 1980s.) (I should get out more.)
Other times it's quite literal--where the hell are they? I've been hanging out with the same guys for years. (Who continue to insist that they don't know any tall eligible men, the lying assholes.) I work in a school; the only new men I meet are the fathers of my students. WHERE ARE THEY?

Enter "Where Are the Men?" by Bobbie Mostyn. The Twin found this at the library and thought it would be amusing. As I generally trust her judgment, I gave it a shot. And it has left me rather confused.
To entice the readers, Mostyn's introduction is chock full of statistics. As we get older, the ratio of single men to single women shifts gradually out of our favor. This is used as a scare tactic--go find them before it's too late!! (She literally tells readers that she is writing "with some urgency" because of this.) This put me on shaky ground with the book. I'm much more of the "I'd rather be alone than deal with the wrong man" school of thought. She seems to be on the side of "find a man any man any man will do as long as he will go out with you." However, I pressed on.
She throws out some generic social advice. The kind of stuff that can be located in your average issue of Seventeen magazine. (Don't stand against the wall at a party! Mingle! Talk to people!) I'm sure it's useful to some. Moving on.
Furthermore, she suggests trying new activities. I could possibly get behind this. I'm on board with a push to be social. You won't meet anyone if you don't leave the house. Fair point. Cats may be great listeners, but they don't talk back and you can't go see a movie with them. And you're really limited to how many cats you can interact with, if you think about it. Nobody ever says, "What's too bad is how many friends that woman has!" Cats, though...cats are different. You come close to the socially acceptable limit and suddenly you're the talk of the neighborhood. In a bad, hushed tones over the fence kind of way. My point? Making more friends is not a bad idea.
But the more I read, the more my jaw dropped. This was not what I expected. Oh, no. I'm supposed to do "male" things. I won't meet men doing "female" activities. Apparently it doesn't matter what I actually like...it matters that I find a man before I'm too old and all the men are dead, gay, or taken.
The author lists places "crawling with men"--and sends her readers there, even if they hate that particular activity. THERE WILL BE MEN, she seems to insist. REMEMBER THE PRIME DIRECTIVE. Faking an interest in something to snag a man...now there's a plan with no flaws.
Let's imagine an example, shall we?
Maybe you hate golf, but you know who golfs? MEN. Therefore, get thee to a golf course! Then you can have conversations like this:
Man: "What's your handicap?" (Non-golfers, this a golf term that I've heard my father say and I just googled to confirm.)
You: "Oh, differentiating bad dating advice from good dating advice, mostly."
Man: "...huh?"
Like I said, no flaws.
Why not try new things that interest you because meeting new people can't hurt, especially if you have some shared interests? Why not a wider social circle will help you meet new people? And maybe you'll want to date some of those new people, because clearly the ones you already know aren't working out? Wouldn't it make more sense to encourage single women to venture outside the dating confines they've given themselves?
Nope. GO WHERE THERE ARE MEN. It reads like a map of the zoo, with each location housing a different sort of man.
My real problem with this book is that it is an exercise in gender stereotyping. Mostyn focuses on finding men in their "natural habitat" (the sports bar! Home Depot! rustic hunting lodges!...I am not joking about that one) on the generalization that you would never think to go there, being a woman. As women, our job is to smoke them out of these man caves and glom onto whatever appears.We can't continue to troll our "feminine" haunts...unless, of course, we're ok with ending up alone.
This book was published in 1999. From where I'm sitting, it feels like it's primarily catering to those frenzied women who, just a few years earlier, desperately bought "The Rules" as they felt their ovaries drying up.
I don't like that this advice could fall into the hands of young women navigating dating for the first time. I'm lucky; I was raised surrounded by family members who insisted that I had plenty of time and that I would find someone when it was right. My aunts used to tell me that I was too young to settle down; that there was no sense in being with a man just for the sake of being with a man. To this day, they tell me that I will find someone when I'm not looking.
I was taught to hold out for someone who was worth it. And maybe that man DOES golf, but we'll have to meet on common ground.