“You ooze sex”

“You ooze sex”

In the history of bad pickup lines, this one has got to top the list.

I mean… seriously.

How many women do you know who want to hear this from a complete stranger?

It was several years ago. My friend Padma and I were in a Tapas restaurant, waiting for our table in the bar, sitting – perched – at one of those high tables that can accommodate standing patrons or people sitting – perching – on high bar chairs. Now, I’m exactly the same height standing as I am sitting in one of those chairs, perhaps even a smidge shorter, but that’s irrelevant.

Padma and I had been there for maybe twenty minutes, and were sipping martinis when this guy walked up to us.

“You ooze sex,” he told me.

Padma almost choked on her drink. I just blinked at him. I had no idea how to react to such a declaration. I mean, yes, I knew I looked cute that night. I was wearing a short skirt and heels and a sweater that showed my girls to their best advantage. But still…

And this guy was OLD.

I mean, not like 80 or anything, but he was definitely on the far side of 55. I was 26 at the time. It would have been different if he’d been a hot, dashing silver fox. But he was all rumpled and oily and icky. He reminded me of my crazy Uncle Bob. Ew! Now, I’m not shallow, but come ON! Is there some sort of pathology common to pervy old men whose feet smell like mayo that they only know how to hit on women half their age? Are they gluttons for punishment or just delusional???

So what do you say when a creepy old man walks up to you and says, “You ooze sex.”???

I wanted to respond with, “Yeah? Well you ooze creep!” But, being the well-raised girl that I am, I forced a smile and said, “Um…. Thank you,” while giving Padma a swift kick.

Padma’s no dummy. She reached across the table to take my hand in both of hers, rubbing her thumbs across my knuckles. Then she looked up at him and said, “You have no idea!” before carrying my hand to her lips.

This, of course, made the guy’s eyes brighten even more.

Thankfully, before he could offer to buy us a drink or worse: make yet another lascivious comment, our table was called.

Attractive....

So, walking home from the gym this morning, I passed a cute boy, also dressed in workout clothes. He smiled at me. It was a cute sort of semi-amused smile. I smiled back.

Now, this boy was WAY too young for me. Probably early to mid-twenties. But nothing wrong with a little smiley flirting, right?

Right.

I got home and walked into the bathroom. And that's when I caught sight of myself in the mirror.

The entire front of my shirt - from the underside of my breasts down to the middle of my tummy - was one, big, wet blob of SWEAT.

Pretty....

Mondays

I’ve got a confession to make.

I like Mondays.

I know, right? Who in their right minds actually like Mondays??? I mean, it’s not like it’s payday or donut day or anything cool like that. In fact, there are plenty of things to NOT like about Mondays.

First of all, Monday is the day when I run. /Running is a relatively new thing for me and I really really hate it. (Not as much as I hate the Gauntlet, but it’s a pretty close second!)

Second, Monday is the end of the weekend. Wake up early, drag my ass to the train and stumble into work. Don’t get me wrong, I prefer the weekend to Mondays, but as a weekday, Monday’s really not that bad.

Mondays are kind of like mornings for me. In the morning the day is all fresh and clean – it hasn’t been ruined by all the crap that can occur throughout the course of the day. And Mondays are the same way. The week is a clean slate on Monday, full of possibilities and potential.

Fridays on the other hand…. I hate Fridays. Longest day of the week. The whole day is just one long rehash of the week that preceded it, a holding pattern for the weekend that is waiting…. And that hour from 4pm until 5pm on Fridays…. Torture.

But Mondays…. Mondays make me happy.

Millie

My Aunt Marian found a lump in her breast last month.

She had it biopsied and Bad News: cancer; Good News: VERY EARLY.

They say good things come in threes (congrats Rational & Heather! Who's next???)

But bad things do too. First my dad (who's doing VERY well!) and now my aunt. I hope whatever happens next is a stubbed toe or a fender bender... :(

Aunt Marian is my father's older sister (he's the baby) and not the first in our family to be afflicted. Her mother - my grandmother - had breast cancer before she died, though I don't know if that's what ultimately led to her death - I was less than a year old when we lost her - the last grandchild she got to meet before she died in her 70s. My next cousin was named for her.

Breast cancer runs on my mother's side, too. My maternal grandmother had a lump removed at 30. In theory I should have had my first mammogram at 30 myself, but because I've never been pregnant and have relatively small breasts, it's never been deemed necessary by my doctors.

But at my next physical, I'll be getting my first mammogram and it scares me to death. I'm afraid of the actual test AND of the potential results.

Being a nurse, Aunt Marian opted to have a mascetomy last week. She's in extremely good spirits. On her website her biggest complaint was that even though she lost a breast she somehow managed to GAIN ten pounds while in the hospital for two days! (Makes my whining about one pound seem offensively petty!)

What I found really sweet, though, was that, as I was reading what my other relatives had posted on her website, I noticed that her two daughters-in-law kept calling her "Millie" which I'd never heard anyone call Aunt Marian, ever.

And then I realized it was a play on MIL, the abbreviation we use in cyberspace for "mother-in-law"

How sweet is that!!!!

Anyway, here's wishing you a speedy recovery and a clear pathology Aunt Marian!!! I love you!

"Plateaus Happen"

So.

I gained a pound this week. GAINED. As in "opposite of LOST"

Yes, I wasn't perfect this week: I drank wine and ate cheese with my bookclub; I partied a bit on the 4th. I could totally accept it if I didn't lose any weight this week, but ..... GAINED????

Yes, Rational my love, I KNOW that the scale doesn't matter as much as BMI and inches, but weight is an easy, quantifiable number.

And I don't like the spike on my Excel graph (Yes, I'm a dork, I have a spreadsheet set up to document my weightloss and Yes, I've made a pretty, colorful graph...)

I get that, really, one pound doesn't amount to a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, but it's very very demoralizing.

:(

Sharon was pragmatic: "Plateaus happen" she told me. But I don't WANT them to happen. If I had MY way, my gently-sloping decline would really be a black-diamond ski-slope.

Sigh.

Topix Cafe

Argh!!!!

The Topix Cafe is broken! Posting came to screeching halt at about 4pm CDT.

I feel set adrift.... at a loss...

For the last hour at work I had to - ACK! - work!

Oh the horror!

Anyway...

Shirt Twin

I’m in a mood today. I'm just feeling kind of bitchy. And a little flakey. I left the house without my lunch. It's such a pain to find something quick AND healthy in the loop. Grrr..

A woman just started to sit down next to me on the train and then paused and did some weird sort of pointy thing. I pulled out one headphone looked up at her askance, wondering if she wanted my seat.

Which made no sense. There were six still open.

“Nice shirt,” she smiled. We were wearing the exact same shirt. I smiled back, though it nearly cracked my jaw to do so.

Now, I had debated over this shirt half the morning. I’ve had it for a couple months but have never worn it. It’s red, which is a good color on me but this is probably the last time I’ll be able to wear it. It’s a bit loose through the middle despite the darting.

Of course, my shirt-twin is both taller and thinner than me and the shirt looks WAY better on her. I feel like one of those side by side comparisons they sometimes have in the supermarket rags: “Who wore it better?”

Not me.

Grrrr.

Stress Relief???

For my birthday last year, my friend Mandy gave me one of those little stress-relief balls. You know the ones I mean: essentially just a balloon filled with sand.

This one was dark blue and shaped like a little dude, complete with arms and legs, a nose, and ears and an insipid little smile.

My job isn't terribly stressful, but I find torturing this little dude to be quite relaxing.

Until, that is, one day several months ago. I was trying to print some things for an important meeting but I was having trouble with our large-format printer. I was becoming increasingly annoyed with the situation and while I waited for the paper to cycle through – again – I grabbed up the little balloon-dude and started pummeling him.

Just as I noticed the paper was coming out crooked – again – I gave balloon-dude's head a good twist and …. HE EXPLODED ALL OVER MY DESK.

I'm pretty sure I said something non-professional at that moment.

Sand gets EVERYWHERE. And the filling inside these little balloon-dudes is not so much sand as a really really fine silica. It got in my meeting notes, in my phone, and – best of all – in my keyboard.

I cleaned up the almighty mess as best I could, even borrowing the vacuum from the janitor. And most of it came up.

Except my keyboard. No amount of canned-air on the planet was going to get this ultra-fine mess out of my keyboard.

So I sucked up my pride and called IT for a new one. They still haven't stopped laughing at me.

All You Need is Luvs

Ugh.

I have noticed, with alarming frequency, the number of Beatles songs that have been made into commercial jingles lately.

Target morphed "Hello, Goodbye" into "Hello Good Buy" which, while irritating, is kind of quirky.

But the worst of the worst is a horrible cover of "All You Need is Love" batsardized into "All You Need is LUVS."

*Shudder!*

It's a shame to have such a great song being pissed and shat on.

I give HUGE props to my ugly-sexy-rock-n-roll boyfriend Tom Petty for keeping it real and NOT allowing his great songs to be sacrificed in tribute to the all-mighty Dollar.

The Gauntlet

My trainer made me do the Gauntlet today.

I hate the Gauntlet. It's my least favorite piece of exercise equipment. I mean, it's a wall of moving stairs.

.

.

What's not to hate?

Sharon: You should try to do one thing every day that you're afraid of.

Me: It's not fear. It's sheer, abject HATRED.

.

.

But I'll do it. I just don't have to be happy about it.

Nearly Perfect

Today is my kind of day. Sunny and warm without being hot; breezy with low humidity. I’d be content if the temperature never got over 75º. Ever again.

I spent my first summer of grad school in Alaska, tramping through the woods scribbling notes. Aside from the insects and the ever-present worry over bears, moose, and wolves, and my own personal emotional upheaval, it was perfect. Just like today. Sunny and 75º nearly every day. Air-conditioned summer.

I could have done without the loooonng days, though. It was kind of neat at first to leave the bars at 2am and have it still be twilight, but it got old fast. I’ve always been a good sleeper but I found it hard to drop off when the sun was still only halfway to the horizon. The worst part was the that the kids in my apartment complex played outside (loudly and unsupervised) until the sun went down – often after midnight. That’s parenting for you. But that’s what you get when the Army puts you up in public housing…

But I’m not talking about Alaska. I’m talking about the most perfect manifestation of summer in Chicago. The only thing that would make today any better – aside from a hunky cabana boy to bring me pina coladas and nachos (Rational???) – would be if it were Saturday.

Some of my friends get “summer hours” and get released around 3pm in the summer. Not me. Summer is my busiest time. Even if I weren’t crazy-busy, I wouldn’t be able to call in sick today (tempting!!!!) because A) we’ve been dreadfully short-staffed for the past two weeks and B) calling in sick the day before a holiday gets you docked unless you have a doctor’s note. (I’ll talk about all the whiney little children who work in my office and the silly rules we’ve had to implement because of them in a later entry) The rule doesn’t really apply to me since I’m “management” but I’m a grown up. So it’s off to work I go.

Still, it’s perfectly gorgeous outside and I’m all prepared to have a fantastic day today and I wish everyone the same!!! Even you.

“Hello, Officer Hottie!”

My good friend Anita and I were at the Taste of Chicago yesterday after work. The crowds weren’t too bad – there were a lot of people as always but the lines were quick.

At one point there was some sort of disturbance at the egg roll place near the SW corner of Jackson and Columbus. As we were walking past there were three mounted cops keeping patrons back (I’m not really sure of the logic of using horses as a conveyance during crowded events but whatever) Anita and I didn’t stay to gawk.

As we were walking East, however, we noticed that there were about a dozen other cops coming from all directions towards the egg roll place. They weren’t running or anything, but clearly they had a mutual destination in mind. And that’s when we saw HIM.

Officer Hottie.

I’m serious. This guy was SMOKING hot. He was six feet tall and muscular but not beefy, and tan with eyes so BLUE you could swim in them.

I smiled stupidly at him and nudged Anita with my elbow, saying, “Hello, Officer Hottie!”
She angled her head to look and her eyes widened.
“Oh my God!” she breathed. “I’ve been bad.”
“Me too. Very very bad!”
“He’d better come arrest us!”

We threw Officer Hottie one last, smoldering, lascivious look and continued on.

For the next twenty minutes we developed a whole back story for Officer Hottie.

He was our best friend’s younger brother. Yeah! As a child he’d been an obnoxious little pest, all knees and elbows, who would follow us EVERYWHERE. Obviously, the little dork had had a wicked crush on us, his sister’s cool, cute friends. But we, being the cruel cruel betches that we were, had tormented him endlessly, ignoring him unless we needed something carried or cleaned up.

But then Officer Hottie had grown up. And boy howdy did he grow up FINE. Suddenly, we were only two in a whole sea of lustful babes trying to tap his perfect ass. He was, of course, overrun with girls panting after him and he had no time for us anymore, which only made him that much more attractive!

And then we started discussing ways in which we might meet Officer Hottie.

“We could pretend to have lost our friend,” Anita suggested.
“Or,” I countered. “One of us could get hurt and need first aid!”
“Ooh! I could demonstrate my new Kung Fu moves for you and ‘accidentally’ break your ankle!” She seemed a little too enthused by this idea.
“We could pretend to be lost tourists! ‘Entschuldigen Sie mich. Wo ist die Bahnhof?’” I dredged up all the high school German I could remember.
Anita grinned, and then, deepening her voice, “’I’m sorry ma’am, I don’t speak Polish’”
“Ma’am!” I exclaimed, outraged. “It’s ‘Miss’ dammit!”
“He doesn’t look very bright.”

In the end, of course, we never found Officer Hottie again, but a part of him will be with us forever.

Sigh….

(I never said I was cool!)