The Selfless Act of Swearing off Skinny for Bikini Season

I hate Bikini Season. Hate it with the passion of the Christ. But it’s here, just like it is every Memorial Day Weekend. This year I am extra under-prepared. I haven’t worked out consistently in a month and I’ve been eating everything my chubby little heart desires.

A tub of icing? Yes, please, and pass the sprinkles.

Mozzerella cheeseballs floating in a vat of olive oil? Even better! And I’ll need a loaf of white Wonderbread to go with it.

A bottle of wine? Sure, but what will YOU drink?

The point is, I should probably stop before my cellulite reaches a point where it will scare small children or take over a small Japanese fishing village, blob style. If it were winter, I wouldn’t have to. I could throw on some sweatpants and get back to my Double Cheeseburger McDonalds Meal.

As I get older, it gets harder and harder to starve myself in the name of attractiveness. I’ve been in a long term relationship for about five years now and she has to love me even if I weigh 500 pounds, dammit. At this point, I’m weighing my vanity against my hunger and sadly, I’m just not vain enough. I know! How did that HAPPEN? By being fat this season, I’m letting other girls, possibly single girls, look better by comparison. Maybe one of these girls will find love. Maybe she will fall in love and give birth to the future President of America! So really my not being in shape for Bikini Season is a charitable act that will help others! I wonder if that makes my grocery bill tax deductible?

Natasia Langfelder

My Three White Hairs

Yes the title of this post is a reference to the classic television show “My Three Sons” and no, I’ve never seen a single episode of it. But let’s get down to business.

I’ve had three white hairs since I was 16. At the time, I liked them. I named them Schlameel, Schlamazel and Jo. When I was 16, Nick at Nite played a lot of Laverne and Shirley. And Jo is named after Jo from “Little Women”, not gay “Facts of Life” Jo. I was actually more into Blair. Anywho, these white hairs were expected. My aunt on my dad’s side had started going grey at 16 and I was relieved that these three were the only ones. Also, I like to think that I wore my white hairs ironically, kind of like, pre-hipster ironic.

Schlameel, Schlamazel and Jo continued to be the only white hairs in my life until my 26th birthday last month. All of a sudden, I’ve been finding a new white hair every day. A tiny little reminder of my slow march to old fat-assery. These hairs aren’t even in a place where they can surreptitiously co-exist with me. They sit on top of my head and loudly declare themselves, like freaking assholes. I really hate them. I miss the days when it was just the four of us. Now I feel like my three white hairs invited all their friends and acquaintances over to my house because they were bored with me. Those little whores totally betrayed me.

Basically, the women on in my father’s family have been grey from their early 20’s and my mother’s family has been dying their hair since their late 20’s. You do the math - I’m screwed.

Natasia Langfelder

The Mixed Bag of Mothers' Day

For the last 20 years, Mothers’ Day has been a mixed bag here in the Parker household, a bewildering blend of obligation and elation, dejection and reflection, sadness and gladness, as I mark the occasion as both a daughter and a mother.

As a daughter, I do my Mothers’ Day card shopping in the Shoebox Greetings section at Hallmark, finding the more staid selections disingenuous.

“Happy Mothers’ Day, Mom”

*open card*

“Thank you for not using spit to clean my face when I was a kid.”

That’s about all the sentiment I can muster when selecting a Mothers’ Day card, for while ‘tis true I owe my life to my mother in the most literal sense, ‘tis equally true that any acknowledgement of Mothers’ Day on my part stems from a sense of duty rather than from any deep feeling of love and respect. My mom made “mistakes” too numerous, too selfish, and too disturbing to enumerate in what purports to be a humor blog, but suffice it to say, they don’t dispense Mother of the Year Awards to mothers who leave their seven- and six-year-olds home alone overnight in favor of spending the night with a boyfriend. While my tales of balancing on a chair to cook dinner for my younger sister and myself do make for interesting storytelling, it’s not exactly the stuff after which June Cleaver was modeled.

As a Mom myself now, though, this is also a day where I reminisce about every step in my 20-year-old son Kevin’s life, from conception to the moment he left for work shortly before 10a.m. this morning. This is the stuff of which the more cheerful reflections are made – the eight months of 24/7 “morning sickness” which resulted in my being one of the few women in the world who never actually gained an ounce while pregnant (Yes, as a mom, you find joy even in eight months of regurgitation once that wondrous little creature comes into your life); the photo albums replete with snapshots of my perfectly clad little man, back in the days when I had jurisdiction over his wardrobe; and the countless weekday evenings and weekend early mornings spent on the baseball field or at the ice hockey rink, the latter at which, as an eight-year-old, Kevin once remarked, “I don’t need to carry my equipment bag; I have people who do that for me.” Those “people” were his father and me and we were more than happy to oblige our little Gretsky-in-the-making.

That’s not to say there weren’t some challenges along the way. Getting Kevin through high school remains one of my greatest accomplishments to date and I’ll be happy if he gets through college on the six-year plan.  And we've had our share of shouting matches, the inevitable clashes which mark the late teen years when, as a parent, you're seemingly no longer needed for anything other than financial support and your son becomes all-knowing and omnipotent (in his own mind).  But overall, Kevin's a good kid – kind, smart, witty, and inexplicably handsome.

Today, despite his night owl proclivities, which, let’s face it, he gets honestly, he set his alarm early so he could have breakfast with me before heading off to work a 12-hour day parking cars for the rich folks who’ll be dining “at the club” today for Mothers’ Day. In some uncanny way, I don’t mind not having him around, as any regret for being without his companionship for the day is replaced by an enormous sense of pride, knowing that he’ll be making the day more pleasurable for countless other mothers who are out celebrating the holiday.

I hope all those Moms spending the day at Trump National Golf Club have their day made just a little bit brighter by the handsome blonde-haired, blue-eyed young gentleman who’s working valet parking today. While you may see him simply as the polite valet who’s fetching your car post-brunch, I’m very proud to call that young man my son.

(P.S. – Be sure to tip!)

Candy Parker

Bringing Text-y Back

A CNN blog yesterday highlighted a study released in March which indicated that 10% of those under the age of 25 “wouldn’t mind being interrupted by an electronic message during sex.” Seriously?

This revelation gives rise to many questions, the most prominent of which in my mind is what kind of horribly uninteresting and non-participatory sex are these kids having that they’d not mind being side-tracked by a text message? I have to think that this has to be a straight-people thing, right?

I can envision some poor 18-year-old girl just lying there while her inexperienced, myopically self-concerned, and entirely hormonally-driven boyfriend of the same age grunts and pounds away, completely oblivious to her needs in the matter…

*Lady Gaga “Bad Romance” text alert sound*

She reaches for her iPhone, always within arm’s reach.

“Wat r u doing?”

“Just hvng SEX, but he’s almost dun.”

“Gr8. Wanna meet L8r? Like in 3 mins?”

Girls – if you’re having sex during which you even hear your text message alert, much less pick up the phone, read the message and respond, you and/or your partner are doing something dreadfully wrong.

At the erudite old age of 48, my advice is this - don’t settle for the kind of sex where receiving a text message mid-act is a welcome interlude. If, during sex, you’re thinking about Tweeting, updating your Facebook status, or are in any other way engaged with an electronic device not operated by your partner, ditch the dud – there has to be an App for that.

Candy Parker

Some Assembly Required

If asked to describe myself, “handy” isn’t a term that I’d list in my Top 100 Attributes. While blessed with enough patience to allow for teaching seven-year-olds to hit a baseball (as a Little League coach – not randomly), I have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to reading and following written directions. And while I think I have a good bit of common sense, when it comes to tasks involving spatial relations, you can color me ditzy.

Amazingly, my shortcomings in this area haven’t served as much of an obstruction in my 48 years as I’ve managed to surround myself with mechanically inclined people throughout my life. When I was younger, my Dad was around to figure out how to get into the battery compartment of whatever darned electronic toy I’d received for Christmas. As a young woman, I always had a roommate with whom to barter skills (“You hook up my stereo and, sure, I’ll help you write your resume.”). In my mid-20’s, I married a guy; a really handy guy who worked as an HVAC repairman, and later as a computer network engineer, so all my home repair and IT needs were met (though, uh, other areas were, shall we say, less than fulfilling…but I digress). When I left him in my mid-30’s, it wasn’t long before I went the U-Haul route with a Texas-raised, rough and tumble dyke who never met a tool belt she couldn’t strap on (mind out of the gutter, kids), so any needs in regard to Ikea furniture assembly were satisfied. And for the last nine years, I was involved with the most attractive and elusive of creatures – a woman who could install a screen door or assemble a gas grill without so much as scuffing her Red Door Salon manicure. She was always fun around the holidays. Sure, she loved the jewelry and Ritz Carlton spa packages, but she positively beamed when tearing the gift wrap off a leaf blower or power drill kit. Sexy, huh?

In any event, I now find myself navigating the uncharted territory of life without someone who knows how to read directions. Even my 20-year-old son is away at college, hence my reluctance to purchase anything that requires assembly. Despite this obvious handicap, after weeks of getting a whiff of the smoked chicken and pork aromas wafting from a co-workers’ office everyday at lunch, I marched myself into a Home Depot a few days ago and purchased a Brinkman Gourmet Electric Smoker.

The box sat unopened in the hallway near my front door for a while, but as the sun rose on my Saturday, I decided there was no excuse for further delay in tackling the task at hand. I had ALL DAY to master this thing, an accomplishment that would both bolster my self-confidence and reinforce my “I’m doin’ fine all by my self,” attitude AND allow me to smoke untold quantities of meat, fish, and poultry. How often do opportunities like that come along?

To mentally prepare myself, I watched the YouTube video of five-year-old Joshua Sacco’s reenactment of the “Miracle” speech given by Herb Brooks to inspire the 1980 U.S. Men’s Olympic Hockey Team. Great moments are born from great opportunities and I was sick and tired of hearing about how hard it was to read directions; this was MY time!

Bolstered by these viral video words of encouragement, and after having removed my contact lenses so as to allow for reading of the fine print in which the directions would no doubt be presented, I opened the box. “Not too bad,” I thought. Some dome-looking thing I instantly recognized as the smoker lid was wrapped in plastic and perched on top. While it is said that familiarity breeds contempt, in this instance it bred confidence, enabling me to tentatively lift the dome from the box.

This was a big self-assurance-sinking mistake. Cleverly nestled beneath the shiny, fire-engine red dome were numerous manuals, bags of smoker parts, and a large packet of something that resembled aquarium rocks. I started to put the lid back in the box and walk away, but knew a defining moment was at hand. Besides, the only task I loathe more than putting things together is returning things to the store, so I carried on.

Not one to welcome the unknown, my first task was to inventory the pieces provided, an effort which revealed that I was lacking a handle bracket for the aforementioned shiny dome lid. Apparently Brinkman plans for this type of ineptitude on their part, as the literature they provided included a flyer printed in bold, 36 point font instructing me to call an “800” number to request any missing parts and imploring me NOT to return the item to the retail store from whom the purchase was made. (Of course, upon dialing the number I was informed via recorded voice that Brinkman's "customer service hours are from 8:30am - 5:00pm, Monday through Friday" - a timeframe so clearly misaligned with the smoker purchasing/assembly habits of Americans.)

Initially, I saw this as yet another opportunity to give up. It’s not my fault I can’t put this thing together – all the damned parts aren’t even in it! But I persevered.

Almost an hour later, having shed my sweatshirt in favor of a t-shirt after breaking into a sweat while trying to secure the smoker door, fingertips rough from handling nuts and screws that only a three-year-old’s fingers are small enough to manipulate, and hands dirtied by something called “lava rocks”, the contraption was assembled. I was victorious! I had faced my fear of written directions and I had won!

The hard part behind me, I flipped through the manual from the “Assembly Instructions” to the much-anticipated “Cooking Instructions,” anxious to put my new smoker to work on a previously purchased pork tenderloin and whole chicken. I’d be the envy of the Business Operations group at the office next week as the tang of mesquite would drift from my office into the hallway. Mmm...

Imagine my disappointment as a perusal of the Owners’ Manual revealed that there was yet a further task which must be carried out before the smoker is ready for the introduction of food, that being a “curing” period in which the smoker, inside surfaces coated with oil or a cooking spray and sans water pan, is run for three hours. Ever impatient, I toyed with the idea of skipping this step, but decided that a pork tenderloin flavored by both mesquite AND enamel paint wasn’t the delicacy to which I was looking forward.

As I type this, my mighty little smoker is “curing” on the deck, my Tundra fire extinguisher at the ready. I’m not quite ready to declare unequivocal victory – that won’t come until I’ve successfully smoked my first batch o’ proteins – but I am feeling a little more self-assured. Maybe, just maybe, Ikea won’t be such a scary place anymore.

Candy Parker

Kate Gosselin: She'll Soon Be Dancing With Herself

Kate “White Women Can’t Dance” Gosselin who gained notoriety on the TLC series “Jon and Kate Plus 8,” and who most recently has been plastered all over the tabloids as the result of the disintegration of her holy union, stooped to the lowest of the lows last night after her performance (I use the term loosely) on “Dancing With the Stars.” After yet another horrendous performance, the perennial scoreboard bottom dweller shared with viewers that her “kids really want me on the show.” Apparently, the gaggle of mini Gosselins “count the days until Monday” so they can watch Mom dance (again, I’m using the term in the most liberal of applications).

Really, Kate? You’ve not exploited your children enough already? You need to use them to tug at the heartstrings of viewers to keep yourself on a cheesy dance competition show? Perhaps if you loosened up a bit, not only might your marriage still be intact, but maybe you wouldn’t appear to be doing “the robot” in every tango, waltz, and rumba and you’d garner judges’ scores sufficient to keep you in the competition without having to invoke the image of gloomy toddlers.

I really hope viewers were turned off by the manipulative tact employed by Gosselin and that tonight will be the night we’re all put out of our misery. While I’d never be one to assert that caustic Kate should be at home with her kids rather than tangoing with Tony (Dovolani, her unfortunate dance partner/instructor with whom she feuds every week) – after all, women have every right to work outside of the home – exploiting her kids in an effort to influence votes is patently pathetic.

Candy Parker

My Own Private Hell - The Post Office on April 15th

I'm at the post office. Yes, on “tax day”. No, I didn’t procrastinate; someone else did and I am entirely too kind.

There are 14 people in front of me and only one postal employee manning the desk. The woman behind me is jittery and laughing at something that none of the rest of us seem to be privy to. She is alone and she keeps touching my butt.

The lady directly in front of me is swaying back and forth, her long faux hair swinging unpredictably. I'm trying to get away from the Butt Toucher, but any attempts to escape bring me closer to a face full of fake, constantly shifting hair.

The line isn't moving. I'm miserable. Some lady just walked in with flowers to present to the sole postal employee and now the line has come to a complete halt. I think I’m in hell...in fact, I'm quite sure of it.

J. Allison