Gender Roles and Why Your Husband Hates that Sweater

I know what your husband or boyfriend or both wants for Christmas and it isn’t a monogrammed sweater vest for him to wear to your family Christmas party. You see, men, in particular married men, don’t actually give a shit about anything that you care about.

In point of fact: I am married to one of the world’s most sensitive and enlightened men and HE doesn’t want that stupid sweater. My two best friends are men. My children are men. I live in a sausage factory. That makes me an expert. So listen up:

Your husband/boyfriend/whatever wants one of the following three things for Christmas/Birthday/Insert Your Favorite Holiday:

1.Sex of some sort
2.A Saturday to do nothing but scratch himself and watch some sort of sport
3.An entire week without you asking him to do something stupid
Let me clarify: something stupid is anything that isn’t listed in numbers 1-3.

So ladies, seriously, get a girlfriend. Quit trying to make your husband/boyfriend/whatever fill that role. By definition, a man is NOT a woman. Enjoy lady time with the ladies. Enjoy man time with your men.

And gentlemen, if you want a lady to treat you like a man, for God’s sake, start treating her like a lady. Gender roles are in place because they make sense. If you want her to give you guy time, open doors, put your hand on the small of her back, change the toilet paper roll, protect her in a bar, and for GOD’S SAKE, quit grooming yourself in front of her. If you’re going to be the alpha, you’d better get really good at it because women in the 21st century are fucking amazing. If you want to rule your roost, do it…but you’d better do it right. And ladies…quit emasculating them. If you want a quality goose, quit cutting off his balls.

Jesus, I loathe the 21st century feminism/gender politics/political correctness.

Just saying.



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Polish

.....Not, you know, the nationality, but the sort of poise and grace I can never hope to have.

When I was 19 years old, I was dating a man we'll affectionately call "The Alcoholic" or AA for short. AA and I shacked up together after my previous boyfriend shacked up with his "big brother" in his fraternity AKA some random blonde who he slept with on my birthday after getting piss-drunk and then called me to have me come get him the next morning. Oh yeah. THAT guy was the first person I ever slept with. Ever. And he didn't cuddle.

Bastard.

I digress.

So AA and I shacked up. He was a poet who was trying to learn to be that guy from "A Beautiful Mind" but was ending up more like what would happen if Ike Turner and James Joyce had a baby. If you're unsure about those references - Ike Turner took to beating Proud Mary and James Joyce was a good Irish who lost his damn mind and wrote a couple of books; one of which ends and begins in mid-sentence. Good stuff.

So, AA was a drunk, hot-mess, Irish, poet who really liked to see his handprints on my flesh. Not my finest hour.

He was also the man who taught me how to be a grown-up...or at least put me on the path to become what I am today. In addition to telling me that I was really more into being the victim than was generally acceptable, he also said this:

"You know, someday, you're going to have to start dressing professionally instead of like some gothic-slut-poet-nerd. Because, like, people aren't going to take you seriously as a doctor if you look homeless all the time."

Oh, really.

Well, it turns out, the idiot/asshole savant was right. I'm about to have to buy a new wardrobe. And I'm conflicted about this. I do NOT want to dress all stodgy and gross and dull. But I don't have enough money or a small enough ass to dress in an appropriately adorable/professional manner. I am all atizzy. What to do?

A. Lose weight.
B. Win lottery.
C. A and B
D. Revert to 19 and give the world the finger.

Man....D is so very tempting.

Politics

So - I've been taking it all in for a while. Whirlygigs waving around me in the form of people with whom I work freaking the fuck out about silly things and big things and things I didn't even know one should freak about.

Issue #1: Shoes. The school at which I teach has a dress code. I seldom abide by it. I realize this is irresponsible. Typically, from the ankles up, I'm all professional. I teach for 5 hour stretches, twice a day. That's a LOOOOONNNNNGGGGG time to be standing and pacing and walking and teaching. I want my feet comfortable. So I wear Chuck Taylors or flip flops or flats....sometimes heels...but not that often. Today, El Presidente de Collegirito rolls into a meeting and steps on my toes.
He says, "Dr. Smith, what are those?"
"Why, they're shoes, El Presidente."
"Oh, really?" says he, "Do we think those are appropriate?"
"Do you think it's appropriate and/or legal to comment on my dress and the alleged dresscode when I've never seen a single handbook on this campus, sir?"
"Let's start the meeting," says he.

Issue #2: Coffee. I love coffee. I spend many hours of my day dreaming of swimming in a lake of rich Colombian brew chilled to a refreshing 75 degrees. Alas, not possible. In lieu of said fantasy, I drink it. Copious amounts...except not so much any more because of that pesky Generalized Anxiety Disorder that is triggered by too much caffeine.

I digress.

Coffee in question was at Coffee Haven, my local watering hole, where I met one of my 3 bosses for coffee today to discuss the shambles of my performance on my last job assignment. No bueno.

Asshat in question orders a "large cappucino with no milk".

The barista kindly tells him cappucinos are impossible to make without milk, he is ordering espresso. He FLIPS THE FUCK OUT.

At some point, I hallucinate cutting this man. He berates the barista. She makes him an Americano (espresso + water) which is what he actually wanted. When he realizes, he tells her that she should make "her fucking signs more intelligible". Seriously? Dude. Who talks to people like this? I'd have gouged out his eyes with the stirring spoon.

Issue #3: Husbands. Mine. I spend a large part of my life contemplating what a joy it is to be married to JDH. The other, smaller part, I spend torturing him and acting like a total bitch. This issue has to do with the fact that on Tuesday, I came home from a very long day of work and found the house reasonable messy and him on the couch. I was pissed. I got MORE pissed the following morning when, shlumping from the bedroom with both kids awake for the second day in a row and school delayed two hours for the SECOND DAY IN A ROW and husband gone to work, I cleaned said house. With a vengeance. I vaccuumed at 7 a.m. Not my finest hour.

Then that night, he has the audacity, the out and out balls to text and say he'd like to catch a beer with the guys from work! The nerve! Even though I've been telling him for, like, 6 months to do just that. On MY bad day!

So I vaccuumed again. And put away laundry. And acted like a total bitch when he got home. He noticed. Went to bed pissed. We sent nastygrams all day today and we're now over it. Adult fight accomplished.

Suck it, JDH, that's what you get for being perfect 95% of the time. A self-rightous, outrageously demanding wife who wants to know just how you plan on fixing the totally unacceptable 5% of the time when you're only semi-awesome.

Seriously. Assholes of the world. Get over yourself.

:)

Airing Dirty Laundry

I have a habit of just blurting out whatever comes to mind. Sometimes this is charming - like when I say some 86 year old man is just adorable in his suspenders to his face in the mall...sometimes, it's appalling. Sometimes it's hurtful.

I don't often delete posts. Even when they're unpopular. But I recently wrote a blog about my father and his battle over the years with a difficult life. Upon re-reading and after an email from my grandmother, I realized how woe-is-me and selfish and childish I sounded...look - in so many ways, my life has sucked...but in many many more, it has blessed me over and over again. It's hard, some days, to pay attention to the blessings and ignore the trials...and a few days ago, on my father's birthday, was one of those days. So I threw a fit. I couldn't find his phone number so I just didn't call him. And I'm not proud of it. I wrote a blog calling him crazy and I thought I was calling to attention how he and I share this trait...this war with crazy....but it didn't. I didn't.

So, if you're reading this, and you know something about fit throwing...I encourage you to consider the people you might be hurting while you're behaving badly. I often don't. And if you're reading this and you're my family - I KNOW how lucky and blessed I am to have you...I do. And I'll be calling my dad tomorrow.

C-

What used to be called poetry

I rummaged through my old writing last night and found a few choice pieces I forgot I had written. I wrote the following in a creative writing class with Michael Heffernan, who is one of the greatest poets I've ever read Some of his work.

You'll forgive the language and content, dear readers. I was once...well...maybe am still inappropriate at times.



ON LOVE
She used to make daisy chains for him
She'd pick apart the stems and join the flowers until
they seemed to go on forever.

Yesterday, she found out that sometimes
Daisies aren't enough.
Sometimes one needs iron cuffs
To hold people together.
So what she did was
Fashion a chain of iron daisies forged
From an imagination
That could never be contained

CHEMISTRY
Isn't it funny how her spiky
Blond, artfully not fixed hair and
Crystalline blue eyes shaded by
The white powder boys don't know
Makes them sparkle and
Carefully ripped jeans carelessly (painfully?)
Shrunken to fit her dieted,
Exhausted thighs
All thrown together by fate
Or whoever the hell is the
God of beauty
To suck in the testosterone crazed masses.
And I sit and watch her
Chit-chat with them, grinning
With her one perfect dimple
And her cherry lipgloss that she
Discreetly tucked into her backpack (I saw it)
Nondescript and got two numbers
In the time it took me to highlight
"positron emission" in my
Chemistry book.

REMINISCE
gone to the bar, heard my professor's band
The best EVER.
Being there, with you;
we drank enough to rekindle flames and fires.
I had propensity for damage.
Burned the inside of my wrist with
your lighter. Felt real for a minute and
Wanted you to want to be tainted, branded. Wanted you to want me.
Burned you too.
My scar is evaporating, you with it.
We consummate the inferno once in a while
Every time, now, the mark fetches
that night.
Fucking when we got home
In front of your friend. Pushing each other - the envelope
You showing off your control; me, wanting you to know how much
I didn't care.
Didn't care enough to mark myself with you.
To blush into the mattress
Wasn't drunk enough, not nearly:
flashes
the stools from the bar we met in
Socked feet
gin candy canes Christmas trees red polka dotted tables wrecked alarm clocks un-sheeted mattresses protracted drives expectation wonder hope moving trucks New Orleans Washington Biloxi Austin ache computers rambling walks cigaretes un-kept resolutions unborn ideas coffee cups against walls muffled screams you on the couch me smelling your shirts packing leaving empty boxes

Our life together in seconds, in ash, in scars and burns and dust.



Isn't it weird to visit your former self like an old friend? It's like seeing the fallen head cheerleader. There's so much pity and wisdom in a life re-visited.

Lazy...

I am not a lazy woman. I was not a lazy child. I spent my days growing up feeding chickens, gathering eggs, doing chores, cooking, cleaning, raking leaves, moving cattle. In short, I lived a farm life. I loved it. When I wasn't doing those things, I was reading or playing in the dirt.

I've spent a lot of time lately trying to figure out what it is that will bring me joy where my career is concerned. I'm a fixer. I like a problem that has a clear beginning and end. So science - well...it might not be working out. You see, we've talked about this before, but science is best when it leads to more questions. This is sort of the recipe for eternal frustration for me. And that, of course, is the appeal of going back to school so I can do medicine. It doesn't much matter in which capacity, doctor, nurse, nurse practitioner, physician's assistant...it's a question of: a patient comes in sick/hurt/broken, the patient leaves with a diagnosis/plan/cure/fix. Easy, right?

Not really. Doing medicine means more school. If my grant doesn't get funded, my family is going to be in a world of hurt. I'm going to have to find a way to compensate for my salary at State QUICK, OR - I'm going to have to pull my kids out of their school and go back to school myself while teaching at night. I haven't really decided...it's not just my decision, you see. My husband has a say, too. And there's still the fingers-crossed, eyes-shut-tight hope that the USDA answers my plea and this isn't an issue for another two years.

I digress: The point is - the things I loved as a child are the things I'd like to do as an adult. And so, I'm currently seeking a job as a person who reads books for fun, plays in the dirt, and gets paid a WHOLE ton of $$$. Any suggestions?

XOXO

That paralyzing thing called smoking.

I used to smoke. I loved it. I still do. I still smoke every now and again. Never around my children, hell, seldom at home...but I indulge. More often than not, I bum a smoke from a student at school. And it is DELICIOUS. Like chocolate cake...only better, because I won't get fat from it.

But I might get dead...so - alas...I have to quit for real. Probably. Okay, maybe not. I'll probably always be the woman bumming a smoke from a stranger on a bad day. But my avid anti-smoker husband and my dear friend who lost a grandparent to lung cancer don't shame me and so I don't expect you to either, dear reader. What I DO expect from you is that you read on.

In our respiratory tract are cells, teeny, tiny little cells that secrete mucous and have teeny tiny little arms called cilia. These cilia are designed to beat, like fingers waving all in one direction - up....up.....up.......wave.....wave.....wave....
Their function is to catch all the foreign matter we breathe in every day, trap it in the mucous, then push it back up to our mouth through coughing so that we can swallow it and all those nasties can be digested. Harmless. Effective. Sick.

"What does this have to do with anything?"

It so happens that those delicious cigarettes do something pretty ugly to the cilia in the respiratory tract: they paralyze them. Specifically, for several hours. And over time, the chemicals in the smoke destroy the cilia all together.

"So what? I have more."

True, you do. But not for long. Follow me: The average smoker has a cigarette every hour or so - each one of those cigarettes paralyzes quite a few cilia for several hours. This nasty cycle continues for the whole day until the smoker decides it's time for bed. The cilia get a break from all the chemicals (assuming the smoker doesn't smoke in his/her bedroom) and they start to work again....what happens?!? Well, all the particulates, mucous, and general gunk that has been inhaled all day long gets pushed back up to the top of the respiratory tract where it waits for the person to awaken. Guess what happens then??? Smoker's cough!! That's right. You've recovered just enough to get some of that stuff up. Let me ask you, what happens when your cilia can't recover any more? Your cells won't regenerate forever, folks. And when that happens, and make no mistake, it will....that's COPD and emphysema. No bueno.

So do yourself a favor and quit - or at least cut back. Your blood pressure and your teeny tiny friends in your lungs will thank you.

XOXO