Just one of those days

I want today to be over, I really do. It started bad and it's just gotten worse, and it isn't even noon yet. I woke up to pee at 5:48 am, and of course I couldn't fall back to sleep. Then Tommy woke up fine at quarter to eight but got cranky and pissy when I changed his diaper. He wouldn't eat breakfast but kept trying to climb over the gate into the kitchen. I finally decided he was teething and force-fed him Tylenol and then gave him a popsicle to numb his gums. He turned the thing upside down in the hallway and poured the melted grape water and ice out of the plastic tube onto the floor, then fell in love with Windex when I cleaned it and had me running around the house spritzing things so he could wipe it up. I decided to wash Kitty, his favorite stuffed animal who was getting pretty dingy, so I grabbed my lingerie bag from the laundry cart, popped Kitty in, and threw in a load of clothes, mostly Ryan's school clothes because she's low on pants.

Meanwhile, Tommy's mad that I stopped spraying Windex on everything, and Tom has hung up on me twice, either because he's touchy or I'm particularly annoying today, neither of which is outside the realm of possibility. But this time he won't pick up when I call him back, so that's fun.

Tommy got hungry early so I gave him a pear while I made mac and cheese, and he ate half the pear, spit the peel out all over the kitchen table, then threw it on the floor and cried when I wouldn't give it back. (It rolled to the edge of the floor, under the cupboards a little, where the dust bunnies hide from the mop. Ewwww. There was no way I was rinsing that off and giving it back.) So then while I was mixing the mac and cheese, and talking to the insurance company since Tom told me today that he won't call for my maternity pre-certification, Tommy climbed up on top of the table and started throwing cans of Mt Dew onto the floor, and one punctured and sprayed sticky all over while I was trying to hear how long they'd cover for me to stay in the hospital after delivery.

Tommy ate very little mac and cheese, then tried to take mine, then got mad when I refused, then ran down the hall to my bedroom. I chased him, of course, and decided to check the dryer to see if Kitty was dry yet or needed more time and . . . the lingerie bag seems to be blood-splattered. Kitty, noooooooo!

Did I mention that I lost my lipstick 3 weeks ago? Apparently, and I can't even fathom how or why, it was inside the lingerie bag. Dryers liquify lipstick, especially discontinued colors of irreplaceable lipstick. I tried to handwash the bag but it didn't work, so now Kitty is back in the washer, in an inside out bag, with a towel load. And thank God Ryan is in a goth phase and most of her school clothes are black now, because lipstick all over her stuff would not be easily forgiven. And of course by the time I got back to the kitchen, my bowl of mac and cheese had congealed into one clump of neon orange candle wax. And now I'm battling the clock to get Kitty washed and dried in time for Tommy to take a nap, because the kid will NOT sleep without him. And he's acting pretty sleepy already so I do not want to have to postpone naptime. And I won't even contemplate the possibility that the lipstick might not wash off of Kitty. As it is, the poor cat looks like he's been hit by a bus.

How porn and National Geographic could help todays women.

From birth on, girls see Cosmo and Glamour in the supermarket checkout lines. We know what grown women look like and what we're going to look like when we're older. But then we grow up and (SURPRISE!) we don't look like that. When we bend at the waist, we get creases in our belly. When we raise one arm, our breasts do not stay level. When we shave, we get bumps and cuts and strips of razor burn. And all we know, is that we don't measure up. It's sad.

Sadder still, guys know it too. I read once an old story about a man who left his bride on their wedding night when he learned that real women, unlike marble statues, had pubic hair. I doubt many modern men would run away from sex, but they do notice the creases and dimples and paunches. I've heard men call beauty pageant contestants fat or ugly. I think it would help if teenage boys went back to sneaking peeks at National Geographic instead of Playboy. If they grew up getting turned on by Amazonian women with nipples at their waistlines, I think real women would be less disappointing than when they see airbrushed models in American magazines. But you know what helped me with my self esteem?

Porn. The women in pron are supposed to be the female ideal, existing only to turn men on, and they, while generally thin and full of fake boobs, actually have flaws. In porn I've seen men slap dimpled asses, grab handfuls of cellulite butt cheeks, and kiss faces with crooked teeth. I've seen nearly flat women, slightly chubby women, women with pimples and razor burn and the occasional bruise. And if these women were hot enough to get cast in a movie with no purpose other than to arouse men, then maybe "flaws" aren't as important as confidence.