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2007 weblog award winner: best parenting blog

Deodorant Wars IV: The New Class

July 02, 2009

(Part One, Two, Three)

I originally planned to rewrite the theme song for Saved By The Bell with all new deodorant-inspired lyrics. I got as far as "When I wake up in the mornin' and my pits give out a warnin' and I don't think that I'll ever stay dry" before I thought better of it. MOVING ON. Let's meet our fresh new cast members:

IMG_2784

DEGREE SEXY INTRIGUE: Hi! Yes. For real. I'm SEXY INTRIGUE from Degree's new "Fine Fragrance Collection." Because apparently deodorant has gone and gotten itself a big ol' complex about being one of those boring, utilitarian things that everybody uses. No! Deodorants are FANCY now. Fancy and fine and blinged out to the maxx. We're like recession perfume. Caviar for your armpits. You may not have a job or much money anymore, but goddammit, you've got a deodorant with a GOLD STICKER ON IT, bitches.

Let's take a closer look at that label:

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(Sexy! And intriguing! I could stare at those...um...amoeba-like puffed-rice animal-spot things all day. I feel like this is the EXACT design that would result if you asked The Girls Next Door to come up with something.)

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SECRET SCENT EXPRESSIONS: Whatever, gold labels are nice, but look at me! I SPARKLE. Like a certain abstinent teen-angsty vampire that apparently All The Kids Today are going bonkers over. I wonder if there's a way I could cash in on the Twilight franchise even MORE directly...

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Also available: Cool Melon Cullen and Wet Werewolf.

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DEGREE GIRL: Hi! I'm Degree Girl. I smell like Just Dance. I'm...okay, I'm just totally ridiculous.

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SUAVE: I cost a dollar.

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NATURALLY FRESH: Hi, I'm Naturally Fresh. A Spray Mist That Cares About Breast Cancer. But not about what Snopes says. I care about YOU. And your health. As you can see by my all-inclusive label, I don't care whether you're a man or a woman: Use me and you will ALL die alone. And smelly. Fine, I don't work very well, but it's the thought that counts. Right?

COMING UP LATER THIS SEASON, ON DEODORANT WARS, THE NEW CLASS:

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Romance!

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Special-guest star DEGREE CLINICAL PROTECTION helps Suave get a date by making him do a lot of push-ups. Naturally Fresh provides the "just be yourself!" bullshit. In the end, everybody learns and loves and laughs.

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And on a Very Special Episode, very special guest star Dried-Out Empty Tube Of Degree Ultra-Clear stops by to have a talk with the girls about not having sex on prom night.


(Dear IRS, Yes, I am indeed submitting a receipt for a ridiculous number of deodorants as a business expense. As you can see, I am a serious businesswoman conducting very serious business.)

Posted at 04:14 PM in breathtaking dumbness | Permalink | Comments (55)

I Asked a Bottle of Red Wine to be My Life Coach, and Look Where It Got Me

July 01, 2009

Conclusion to Amy Takes Her Foot-in-Mouth Show On the Road: Holy awkward SHITBALLS, people. She walked by me this morning and didn't even LOOK at me. And then picked her son up EARLY this afternoon. Probably just to avoid me, because I am sure I made that much of an impression and there couldn't possibly be any other explanation, like a doctor's appointment or a vacation or...okay, there are possibly a few other explanations. But me and my mad social skillz remain suspicious. Suspicious and lonely and very glad we were both too lazy to follow-through on the cookie idea.

Over the last few weeks I've read more than a smattering of blog entries addressing the whole "are we done having babies" question. A good number of them were written by women with babies somewhere around Ezra's age. And they of course got me thinking about writing a similar entry, because I haven't had an original thought bash around my skull since at least 2004. (Unless you include the thing with the talking deodorants. Then I am a national treasure of useless creative vision.)

A few weeks after Ezra was born, I tentatively said something to Jason about the topic. Something like, "We're done, right?" And he immediately said yes, we're done.

So I asked him when, you know, he planned on calling the doctor, as per our longstanding agreement on the division of childbearing and childpreventing duties. And then he immediately said, oh, wait, I didn't mean THAT done.

Noah was going to be our only child -- a plan that lasted about five weeks or so. The whole experience was exactly like a roller coaster -- terrifying, thrilling, hard on the eardrums -- and we were already shrieking "LET'S GO DO THAT AGAIN!" before the safety bars had even been released.

And Ezra, of course, was going to be our last child. I tried to savor my pregnancy accordingly: This is the last time I'll feel a baby kicking. The last time I'll prepare a nursery. The last time I'll have the belly and the boobs and the nausea and the fat face and the weird skin and the backaches and the puking for SIX GODFORSAKEN MONTHS.

Right. So maybe I could kind of see the positives of the "no more babies" situation. At times, anyway. Plus, it was finally dawning on me that babies are actually SMALL CHILDREN. Who become slightly bigger children. And that no matter what we do or how hard we pray it to be otherwise, I am going to have to deal with a three-year-old ALL OVER AGAIN.

We're done. Right?

***

Last week Jason and I booked the babysitter and went out for some sushi and a movie. There was a young couple next to us with their baby girl, who was about Ezra's age. I made some kind of involuntary squawk at the sight of her adorable little cotton sundress, and Jason sighed.

"You want a girl, don't you?"

Do I want a girl? Do I really want a girl knowing how hard it is to raise one in this culture of over-sexualized Princess Dora Bratz dolls and Mean Girls and eating disorders and oh God, the INTERNET? Do I really want a girl, a teenage girl, who may end up being exactly like me, or nothing like me, but either way will be all but guaranteed to hate me for at least a few solid good years? Do I really want a girl to come along and blast me out of the comfort zone I've created as being the mother of boys?

"Yes. I think I do."

Jason sighed again and admitted that if we KNEW we'd be guaranteed a girl, he'd love to have another baby. And before I could even mention the A-word (a complicated discussion we've had many times before, for the record) (edited to add: ADOPTION, holy crap, not the other A-word), he went on. "Whatever. Even if we had another boy, I'd be so happy."

He then went on to wax rhapsodic about Ezra, sweet Ezra, the baby who at one time Jason hoped would be a daughter, but who is a son and who is exactly who he is supposed to be and who our family needed, because HOLY CRAP HE IS SO AWESOME.

***

Okay, so maybe we're NOT done. At least, as Jason said, not THAT done. But I am not in a rush, far from it. We have a few more years before my (admittedly already erratic) fertility clock winds down, so perhaps it's best to simply say we're not ruling it out sometime in the future, when the boys are older and a little more mature or at least capable of wiping their own butts. Perhaps, as Noah's issues become a little more understandable and a lot less of a question mark, we could adopt, thus skipping the fairly awful process of trying month after month after month to conceive. Perhaps we will rule it out later down the road, but for now, let's not rush into anything. Let's just leave everyone's anatomy as-is and...you know...BE CAREFUL in the meantime.

Yes. Good plan!

***

So of course this means that I -- she of the 75-day cycles, the wildly erratic and oftentimes completely absent ovulation -- would suddenly start getting regular periods. Like clockwork! Like birth-control-pill regular, down to the HOUR. Down to the hour BEFORE, when I suddenly realize that I've been a raving bitch all day and developed a single angry large pimple right in the middle of my forehead. Of course.

See, here's the thing: When you don't ovulate, you don't get pregnant, even if you want to! And I've spent most of the past six or so years of my life wanting to get pregnant, TRYING to get pregnant, but only very rarely actually succeeding in getting pregnant. And even before that, I generally viewed my condition as a plus, a perk -- who cares about birth control! I've got your birth control RIGHT HERE! <points to barren, uncooperative womb area, ohhhhh yeah>

And here's another thing: As a relatively-inexperienced regular-period-type-of-girl, it turns out that I am also really terrible at math.

And...dates. And...calendars. And stuff. I pulled up my old fertility-charting/period-reminder program this morning and entered in some data and...oh. What? This weekend? When we...and we didn't use...and...oh. OH.

Cough.

No. I don't have any big announcement to make. NO! As I scan what I've written so far I realize it totally sounds like that's what I'm leading up to, but no.

I'm just a 31-year-old mother-of-two in the midst of her Very First Pregnancy Scare, on the short end of the first Two-Week Wait where she honestly has no idea what outcome she's hoping for.

On the one hand: SPECTACULARLY TERRIBLE IDEA.

On the other hand:

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I wouldn't kick another one out of bed for eating mini-waffles, you know?

Posted at 04:50 PM in babychase vNO.NO, Jason, wine | Permalink | Comments (124)

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