The Underwire Report

I had a weird day. At least, my boob did.

Let me explain.

A Tale of Fire and Ice…and Snowmen

“One wintery day I made a snowman, so very round and tall…
The next day when I saw him, he was not the same at all…“

(Line ripped from one of my favorite books to read to my son: Snowmen at Night.
Buy it. Read it. You won’t regret it.)

Of Gravity and Rodents.

“I really should be grateful.” That’s what I tell myself while vacuuming out the car. Just imagine if I’d found them while driving?

When Stoves Go Bad…

It was a rough night…
The stove decided to give up the ghost
…and it tried to take me with it.

Fahrenheit 451 – Bad Hair Edition

Where there’s smoke…there is a good chance of singed hair.

MAMMARIES…

Some things speak for themselves….this isn’t one of those things.

This thing kind of screeches.

Consider yourself warned.

Think Pink

Right after finishing GISH, Kiri took a tumble in the hallway. She wrenched her ankle, her knee, and her hip. She cracked her head against the wall. She went camping and got vertigo. Obviously she’s under a curse. (Actually, this might explain more than a few things wrong with her…) Join her internal debate team in figuring out the cure!

Can GISH Cure Cancer?

It is kind of hard to write something funny about getting a diagnosis of breast cancer, but it helps if you were signed up for G.I.S.H. (W.E.S) before even a hint of trouble arose on the horizon. GISH(WES) stands for The Greatest International Scavenger Hunt (the World has Ever Known.) It may not cure cancer…but it sure cured getting the diagnosis.

Stupid Entropy

I have always wanted to be a smart person.  Or, at least, to feel like I was a smart person.

I have also been suffering lately from the certainty that I am not getting any smarter. In fact, there is evidence to suggest I may be regressing and losing my faculties altogether.

In other words, I am getting dumber.

How do I know this? I tried recently to be clever and failed.

I attempted to write a post. I wanted to be witty and erudite, to create a mathematical equation quantifying the values of parenting–like something you might see on a white board on The Big Bang Theory set. I wrote for hours. I struggled. I waffled. I flailed in my efforts to write what my brain kept telling me what should be a funny post.

At the same time, I have been trying to research what kind of cell phone or carrier to switch before my iPhone dies for good. The more I read on the topic, the less sure I am that I am capable of making a rational, informed decision.

To stave off complete digital death, I switched off as many features of my ‘smart’ phone so as to conserve the battery life past a nano-second. I turned off so many functions, my phone stopped receiving voicemails and texts. As a result, my ‘smart’ phone is now a dumb phone which is holding my information hostage until I turn my data back on.

Didn’t phones used to just work before ‘data’ was invented?*

Why is a phone designed to use data to send a message anyway?** 

*shouts into the abyss*

WHHHHHHHHHHYYYYYYY?

In my efforts to keep my phone running while not plugged into a recharger, I even deleted Facebook from my apps.

The entire next day I learned exactly how often I have been checking Facebook. Like, every fricking time I had a break…or had to wait in line…or stopped at a red light for more than two seconds. I wish I were kidding.

So, I’ve learned two things this week: I am not getting smarter and my phone is possibly making me dumber.

In my research for ‘smart’ terminology, I found a physics term that I feel describes my mental state:

En·tro·py, noun

/ˈentrəpē/

PHYSICS

1. a thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system’s thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness in the system.
2. lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder.

Apparently I am suffering from a terminal case of entropy.***

Let’s just hope it’s not stupidly fatal.

Asterisk Bedazzled Footnote:

*C’mon conspiracy theory junkies, give me your best explanation for why phones cost ten times as much to do half as well for less years than you’d like. And then tell me why we fall for it?

**GROUP BREAK-OUT SESSION: What exactly is DATA and why is it the new gold standard for the inequalities between the haves and the have-nots? Discuss.

***Additional proof of my stupidification is denoted by the fact that I have to use the second definition of Entropy to understand the meaning of the word.

*—*—*

The Image Stolen for this header comes from a site that did a much better job of actually explaining entropy–in case any of you are smarter and want to read up on it.

 

 

Happy Lousy Valentine

Pinterest: home of the most disgusting things you can Google.

We were introduced by a friend.

She didn’t know you would be so clingy, so demanding.

Such a total leech.

Sucking the life out of me.

But when you started in on my kid, that was it.

It was time for you to go.

It wasn’t easy.

You didn’t want to leave.

It was clear.

You had to die.

Stuck home on a snow day, I’m Googling ways to end you.

It wasn’t enough to get rid of you.

I had to totally erase your existence.

Clean anything you’d touched like a literal plague.

Boiling all the sheets was easy enough.

But trying to get a kid to sit still, while I tore your influence away one painstaking strand at a time?

Just awful.

Everything had to be examined.

All the lies and denials.

It was a total nit-picking nightmare.

I went to a specialist.

We went over everything.

Talked about how you wouldn’t let go.

How I just wanted to cut you out of my life so badly I was willing to get rid of anything you held dear.

“Just do it.” I told her. “Quick, like a band-aid. I’ll close my eyes and think of Sinead, Sean, and Shaquille. They’ve made it work for them.”

She talked me down from the nuclear option.

Getting your hair done is usually a calm, soothing experience.*

But getting rid of you was not.

With every stroke, it felt like I was being pulled in two.

As she scorched my tresses in thirty-second blasts, I visualized you frying until your little head popped.

I imagined your tiny death rattle.

And then I went home and cleaned like a woman possessed.

If you’d touched it, into the garbage, laundry, or freezer it went.

And then, I tackled my child.

It wasn’t pretty.

It wasn’t fun.

But it had to be done.

And if you ever come back into my life, I will totally do it again.

Breaking up is hard to do.

But in eleven days, after a repeat cathartic cleansing, it’ll be over.

I’ll finally be rid of you.**

Happy Lousy Valentine’s Day, you creep.

 

Asterisk Bedazzled Footnote:

*I’ve never paid so much to have my hair done only to leave a ‘stylist’ looking more like a train wreck. Except for the time I went to high-end salon and they gave me (without my permission) some godawful cut called a ‘Rachel.’ Looking back, even this experience wasn’t that bad!

**Don’t visit us for at least two weeks to be safe.

The price we pay for hugging people.  Maybe my son had the right idea all along.

 

*_____________________________________*

You read this far bonus:

I found a weirdly appropriate book in French while searching for Google images to accompany this post. I couldn’t quite fit it into the above text but wanted to share it with you.

Here is: The Terrible Adventures of Valentine and Her 118 Lice.

Yes, I’m giving you lice for Valentines.

It truly is the gift that keeps on giving.

 

Featured image available at: https://www.toilette-humor.com/valentines/valentines_heart_rejects.shtml

 

 

SNOW

As the fourth snow day in a row reveals the madness of winter housebound by frigid air and fluffy white stuff, I am revisiting a piece I wrote in 2015. Truer today than it ever has been.

TheDustSeason

Snow, as heavy as death,

How you break the frail back.

Shoveling is a gladiator sport, and

Winter is the lion which slays you.

 

Roar the oncoming hordes of flakes.

Sodden mittens clench the staff,

A blade against an unrelenting foe.

Blisters in anticipation.

 

Hurl the churlish weapon in futile rage.

A pain given is a pain received,

For every shovelful is death to someone.

And snowmen weep when the sun comes out.

 

Latticed crystals mock in six-sided glee

Covering once more the open ground.

Laying the monstrous earth to sleep.

Writing epitaphs in mounds of white.

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