Living La Vida Alpo

AKA Winter suicide prevention

*giggles*

Seeing this kind of thing is what makes me forget I have a gas oven now.

(via failblog.org)

How's everyone else in the area dealing with the snow?  Leah has her fort built out of what living room furniture I have, Colin's staring out the window growling at the snowflakes, and I'm prowling my cabinets looking for knock-me-out drugs.

Not too bad, considering it looks like a foot of snow already in some places...

Patience, thy name is IMPOSSIBLE

Whenever I see a film made via stop-action I have to stop and stare.  Because, dude, do you know how much work that is?  You take a picture, move something half an inch, take another picture, move it again, take another fucking picture, move -- OH MY GOD my soul is jittering out of my ears in protest just typing this.

The people who made this?  Superheroes. 



And yes, those really are just post-it notes.

Wanna see how they did it? Gah. Sit on your ass and look how much other people are willing to spend months of their lifetime moving pieces of paper around on a wall so that other people can sit on their ass and stare.

Tab Dump

With absolutely no method behind the madness. 

Deal with it, elves.  Mwah:

• L-word creators break their silence in this fascinating interview.  I'm in love with these brains.  Someday I'll join their club and... create something too.
• Obsessed with this blog by Sara on the way your brain sorts out its info.  I wonder if I'll ever be able to make sense of the world via ranges of dizziness, which is pretty much what I'm experiencing now.
• The fact that this link will take you to Oprah's webpage is NOT a sign of my capitulation, I promise.  Rather, it's a sign of how much I'm in love with Ayelet Waldman (aka Michael Chabon's writer wife).  Her so-called controversy: that she puts her husband at the center of her life, not her children.  I have a bone to pick with her about that, but hey, at least she shook things up, right?
• If you don't already subscribe to Sharon Pajka-West's feed, go, run, click NOW.  She always seems to have the in-info on new deaf books or deaf characters.  Now, this posting she has up on Lance Allred's memoir is kinda irritating me.  I've recently fallen out of love with the memoir in general, especially in the ways publishers market them.  Look!  Mormon!  And raised a polygamist!  Oh!  And he's *gasp* deaf!  And... wait for it... oh, no... he struggles with OCD.   In essence, the memoir marketing game seems to be about how many "oh no, the poor thing" factors you can slap on a book jacket.  Whatever happened to good, accessible, relatable writing!?

Balm for my soul

I'm feeling unusually bitchy tonight, so I decided to drown my sorrows.
Pink milk is the shit, yo. Drank it all the time when I was a kid, and still do when I feel like I need my momsie (actually... she bought me this bottle last week after my surgery.  How fitting).

Guess it's kinda obvious, 'cause CK wrote keeping my habit supplied into his vows when we got married. Now he's off the hook, but that's okay -- me and pink will be just fine.  Another one, bartender!

Love thy boobs. Or butcher 'em. Up to you.

I want to chop off my ta-tas.

There, I said it.  I sat in front of my screen for a few minutes wondering how else to say it, but that's what I kept coming back to: Chop them off.  I want to.

I don't think it matters why, because of a wonderful phenomenon I've discovered called MY PREROGATIVE, so let's just leave it at this: I hate my boobs, and I want them gone.  Well, partially gone, anyway. *ahem*

I've had them since I was 10, so, trust me... after 18 years I'm pretty sure any sort of self-acceptance would have come by now.  Especially since 10 of those years were spent intimately with someone who never said anything but gorgeous things about them. 

I've been talking about doing something about it for about five years now, but this year seems to be the year of action for me, so I went and scheduled a consultation with a doctor who's a family friend.

When I mentioned to a (wise and well-meaning) friend last week that I had an appointment with a plastic surgeon on Monday, I was a teeny little bit irritated when she started saying some mumbo jumbo and "searching for happiness on the outside when I'll only ever find it on the inside," and "this is the way the Goddess made you..."  and "Honey, there's something for that already.  It's called a BRA."  Dude.  I know.  And I love you for telling me this. 

Do I think carving up my body is gonna make me happy?  Har har.  Do I think carving myself up is gonna make me like my boobs better? OHMIGOD, YES.  Give me the knife right now, I'll do it myself.

For a min, though, what my friend said to me made me think a bit harder about my desire to go under the knife... and serendipitous timing stepped in with the discovery of this site (NSFW) on "normal non-sexualized breasts," whatever that means. 

Basically, it's a gallery of collected photos of random women's breasts -- none porny or modelesque, but all gorgeous in their own way.  I fell in love with the commentary underneath each picture -- they made me feel so human.  A couple of my faves:

The man-influenced: Age 30. "I've never been comfortable with my breasts - negative comments from men have made me very uncomfortable naked. I like having small boobs though, my friends with big boobs get constant staring/comments from men on the street!"

The media-influenced:  "When I was younger, I was very self conscious. I even went to a plastic surgeon (who end up making me feel worse about my appearance, but I opted not to have corrective surgery). Every boyfriend I have had has been very supportive and loving (in reference to my breasts). I have found in my personal experience that men are just as concerned with their imperfections as we are with our own and they know that REAL women's breast are not what is shown on TV, movies, etc."

The self-assured: "I'm eighteen and have never been pregnant, but I come fully equipped with real flesh-and-blood breasts - my right is larger than my left, I have one inverted nipple, visible veins, stretchmarks from rapid adolescent development, even light downy fuzz covering the entire breasts. Whatever. I love them. They don't belong to men, they don't belong to society: they belong to me."

I really, really, wanted to join in that last woman's club and just not care.  But you know what?  I do.  I'm tired of getting attention for my boobs instead of what's on top of them.  I'm tired of not being able to run or jump because it hurts too damn much.  I'm tired of accidentally spilling things on tables 'cause I forget how far their reach is.  I'm tired of having to strap myself into contraptions lest they fall out and/or make an accidental peek-a-boo appearance. 

All that aside, I'd like to be the kind of woman who doesn't have to spend time thinking about her body or the way she looks, because there's too fuckin' much out there in this world that's way more important.  I'd like to be able to take my sexiness for granted without second-guessing it because of the way I feel about my breasts.

A couple nights ago at the gym while I was on the treadmill, I glanced up into the mirror and nearly ran out screaming "EARTHQUAKE!!"  There was this woman behind me on an elliptical bouncing around at top speed.  Or, rather, her boobs were.  And I swear they were chanting a siren song specifically for me. 

Ooga booga ooga.  Ooga booga ooga.  Ooga booga ooga. 

I couldn't stop staring at her, and I felt so bad about my roving eyes that I had to slam the stop button and leave the room early.  The scary part?  I'm bigger than her, boob-wise.

Then I felt like crap.  'Cause you know what?  As long as I find myself judging my own boobs, I'm always going to be judging other people's chests as well.  And that's a shitty thing to realize.

So on Monday morning, I schlepped myself down to the doctor's office and got measured and poked and squeezed and prodded like a piece of prime grade A meat.  He picked one up in his hand and said, "Wow, these are heavy!"  Um.  Thanks?  Or... sowwy?  Ha?

Turns out I do have just enough tissue for insurance to cover it... he said he'd have to lipo my "side breasts" to get enough, but it'd do.  (Holy fuck, side breasts?!)

And now I find myself at a crossroads.

Either way, I've promised myself that within a year, I will never, EVER, think the words "ooga booga ooga" again when I see a set of breasts.

My Altar

or, as CK called it last night because I had incense burning in a room with windows and doors shut: My Drug Den.

I've always wanted an altar -- just a place where I collect things that represent what I hold sacred in my life.  With this book group I'm belatedly beginning to participate in and the book we're reading, Soul Coaching, I finally have the little nudge to do it.  It's a work in progress, of course, just like my life.

I've also incorporated the four elements - to the East is incense: air; to the South a white candle in a red holder: fire; to the West, amethyst: water; to the North, wood, green turquoise, malachite, and iron pyrite: earth.

Above the poster of Saraswati (a birthday gift from a dear friend and Sivananda yogini) also happens to be a photocollage of me at various moments during my adolescence with lots of my favorite people, and how perfect is it that the only place I could find to put my altar was on top of a bookshelf?!

 

Emphasis on CLEAN. I promise.

A few weeks ago we were walking through a shopping mall on a very frustrating hunt for some size 1 white patent leather heeled shoes.  How hard can those be to find?  Seriously?  And why, of all places, did we finally find them at SEARS?!

*ahem*

Anyway, we were walking through a shopping mall when we passed a store called Lush.  I've never heard of this place before, but whenever I mention it to someone, their eyes pop open like I'm Santa Claus. 

"You know that store Lush?"

"Ooooh!  Ahhh!  Whoa!  Ohhhhh!"

"Oh, you do.  Okay."

Well, there were some very friendly salespeople out front.  When I say friendly, I mean one was sitting on a chair with her bare feet in some kind of water bath, and she called out to us and was all, like, yo!  Come look around while I chill.  Dude, this place is awesome!

Ohhkay. 

So we decided to take a break from strangling each other over the White Shoe Search and walked in.  Besides, it couldn't be that bad. 

Handmade products!  Freshly Made! Handwritten Signs!  Minimal Packaging!  Natural Ingredients!  Vegan Products!  Packaged and Marked with Expiration Dates!  Environmentally Friendly!  Unabashed abuse of Exclamation Points!

We were the only ones in the store, so we got our own little tour of all the products, and we were allowed to try everything.  And almost nothing is in a bottle, so there's very little plastic in the store.  The shampoo looks like bar soap.  Actually, scratch that.  Everything looks like bar soap.

Except for the face soap, which looks like a loaf of cheese waiting to be sliced for purchase.  Which pretty much sold me.  Anything that looks like cheese is my fwiend.

There were tubs of water in strategic spots around the shop, which was good, since we kept touching and rubbing and sniffing and stuff.  It was like being a horny teenager in a sex shop, only clean.  Really clean.  Sudsy clean.

Our tour ended by this giant wall of bath bombs, which was a real score, because the salesperson we were with let us try like three bath bombs (and dude, for the cost of one bath, they're not cheap).  Oh goodness.  Leah thought it was fun, sure, to see a ball explode into bubbles and the water change colors and yummy smells bombard her nose... but it was stranger even to see mommy and daddy running back and forth between the bucket and the wall and throwing stuff in every chance we could get.  Sex shop, I told you.  But clean, dude, CLEAN!

So we left the store with way more loot than I needed.  But now I'm in love with this and this.  And especially this, which calms my dry frizzy hair down so much I'm starting to wonder if my fairy godmother really works for Lush.

As we were walking out, I stared longingly up at the sign for the store, sighed, and said, "I wish I worked there.  I need to work there."

Sigh.  Lush'd probably fire me after a week for inserting the word "orgasm" into every product description.

We also left with a honeybee bath bomb for Leah, which we sliced into half to prolong the enjoyment.  And I had to share. 

(FYI for deafies or people with the volume off: you hear the thud as I drop the ball in, and then the fizzing, big-time.  Think Alka-Seltzer on steroids.  And then if you can't figure out what Leah is saying, well... I feel sorry for you.)

Leah's HoneyBee Bath Bomb from Queen Alpo on Vimeo.

Move over, Hockey Moms and HipMamas

This right here... is what I would be if I had my own stylist and PR firm at my disposal. 

Forget being a soccer mom or a MILF. 

Hello, SexyBitch Mama.

Observe: papparazzi-deflecting shades, trend-bucking ensemble that telegraphs success already achieved, killer sisyphean heels.  No-nonsense glare with kid's backpack in hand.  The other hand engaged in a Do-NOT-mess-with me battle with kid, who is sufficiently terrorized by SexyBitch's demeanor. 

You just know that although this is a New York street in the middle of rush hour, traffic is going to come to a total halt.

The only thing missing is the Pulitzer and shark-biting literary agent.

Via Jezebel: "Someone's Late for School."

It's called "overkill." And I'm squatting in a big, stinky, pile of it.

My mother-in-law bought me a copy of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, which I had actually blacklisted after finding out Oprah had just picked it for that corporate publishing brainwashing machine she calls her bookclub.  

But dear MIL begged and begged for the chance to send it to me and even pointed me at reviews written by fellow Oprah-eschewers who said it was sooo good, good enough to ignore the Oprah sticker.

That's when I had a conversation with the bitch that lives in the left hemisphere of my brain, and said, "Hey, yo?  Free book?  And it's one you were going to read before Oprah picked it?"

"Yeah, but it'll probably have Oprah's name on it?!"

"So we can ask her to get a copy without her name on it?  Hello?  Selective mutism?  One of your obsessions because of the connection you think it has to deaf studies?  And, hey, she said it has DOGS in it!"

"Dogs?"

"Yeah, dogs!  The cute, furry kind!  Three of them."

"Er..."

"'C'mon.  It's free.  You're not pimping yourself out to Oprah by doing this, I promise."

"Dammit. Fine.  Let her send you the effing book.  One condition."

"What?"

"You deal with CK when he complains about how we have too many books and there's no room left in the bed for him."

"Nah, that won't be a problem.  I'll just sic his mom on him if he does."

"Ah.  I knew I liked being your bitch."

So I got the book a couple days later... and lo and behold, glory hallelujah -- the Oprah sticker peeled off quite painlessly.

And then I put it on top of the card stack that is currently my bookshelf, where it's sat untouched for a week now.

Blasphemy.  Treason. 

But geez.  Not only do I read three or four books every three weeks for school, I've just joined one book club that met last Sunday, but I didn't go because Leah was sick, which really sucked because I personally sacrificed exactly four iotas of my personal sanity after Colin chewed up the library's copy of the book and I had to replace it with the last few dollars in my bank account. 

And I thought the book was boring as heck, but I read every last word for a book club meeting I never attended.  Yeah.  Who knew I was a masochist?

And now it looks like I've decided to join The Next Chapter: Soul Coaching.  Which I think is kinda cool, because not only will I get to work through a book with a group of other neat strangers, but the book itself looks right up my alley, since I've been going through a really introspective phase this year and also wanting to deepen my study of paganism.  (This book isn't pagan, nor is the group pagan, not that I know of, but it certainly looks like it's pagan-friendly.) 

I could use some structure to this navel-gazing I'm becoming fond of doing, so I'm jumping in.  Interested?  Feel free to jump in too.

And next month is... NaNoWriMo.  Yep, the annual slapdash race toward a novel of 50,000 words in 30 days, in which the only prize is self-satisfaction and a nifty web badge.  And, if you've written anything good, the chance to whip it into shape and get it published, which, apparently Sara Gruen did with the awesome, fabulous, amazing novel Water for Elephants. 

So, yeah, November is NaNoWriMo.  I've never done it, just drooled over it from the land of virtual-afar.  I'd join, but since I'm already kinda-sorta working on juggling with writing three books -- two novels and one memoir -- at the moment, I think it's kinda dumb to add this to my "but, but, but... I wanna!" list. 

How about you? Taking the pill?  Corrinne Kenner has some tips to make the trip easier.

And... did I dream it, or did Hortense, the awesome new weekend blogger over at Jezebel say something about a Jezebel Book Club?  A google search says yes, but click through and Jezebel redirects you back to the front page.  If this was a tease, Tayari Jones got duped too - she linked to it on her blog as well. 

Aw, woman.  And I was so excited.  Humph. 

Would it be stupid to complain of having blue ovaries now?

Madonna headed for singlehood?

The rumor mill is spinning quicker and quicker: My all-time hero may be headed for divorce court.

Guy's mum says "divorce shmivorce."  Aussie papers say he's flown to America in a last-ditch effort to save the marriage.  They're worried about the kids, but living separate lives. 

Can't be an easy time, though from all reports she's "totally focused" on prepping for her new tour.   And how sad is it, if they really are going through a tough time, that they know everyone else is reading about it online?

Still, I have every bit of confidence she will end up being just fine in her next reincarnation, whether it is or without Guy. 

She always is.  She's a tough bird.  That's why I love her.

Picture swiped from this photoessay on their relationship.