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  • Aging is for the weak, and everyone else
  • More short cuts
  • Smol Ketchups
  • What’s the opposite of green juice and deep breathing
  • Living through it all online
  • The Change
  • 18
  • Ok but ALSO:
  • Midlife POV
  • Influence and Dooce
  • Horse therapy
  • You can’t go home again
  • Obsolescence
  • Before and after
  • A cringe confession on friendship

Archives from 2002-2006

Okay! Let’s move on from that foamy-mouthed business I posted yesterday, clearly I had a giant organic-tofu-stick crammed up my ass. If you’re still kind of pissed at me, please enjoy this proof that I have basically always been a total fucking goober. I was looking through some old photo albums today, and decided to capture a few of the more memorable images:

Here I am as a wee kidlet, and while I don’t think I was quite as consistently suspicious as Riley was/is, apparently I had my moments.

Not a bad looking kid overall, though, if I do say so myself. Look at that precocious 3-year-old, lording over her . . . uh, cake. Her cake festooned with — are those cat turds? Is that a cat turd cake? Or . . Vienna sausages? Okay, I’m pretty sure my mom wouldn’t have . . . MOM WHAT ARE THOSE BROWN THINGS OH MY GOD.

A little bit older here, and still fairly cute, if you forgive the insipid head tilt and . . . wow, rainbow heart necklace. Groovy.

Aw, look at the little ballerina! It’s adorable and nauseating, all at the same time.

HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAAA. Oh god. Sorry, Cat of My Youth. Sorry. Jesus.

And — oh. Oh dear. Well, we’ve really started to slide off the rails here, haven’t we? The glasses, the hair, the blouse, the . . . the TEETH.

Yes. Yes indeedy. Socks, shoes, shorts, shirt, visor. VISOR. SOCKS. VISOR. Yes. Ahem.

Say, why don’t we really take a GOOD look at those glasses. What are they, five, six inches thick?

Well thank god, we’ve moved on to the Era of Contacts, but sadly this is still preceding the In-Depth Headgear/Braces/Palatal Spreading Device/Tooth Extraction/Retainer Years. What a grill. Also, Eugene Levy called, he wants his eyebrows back.

Ah, the dorkily earnest gymnastics-themed photo. Xaaaaanaaduuuuuuuu…

Big hair, big earrings, denim jacket . . . ladies and gentlemen, the 80’s! I’m sure my ESPRIT bag was nearby.

Fast-forward a few years to my freshman year in high school, where apparently I strived for sort of a . . what, Flock of Seagulls vibe? I bet that hairdo took about a can of Aqua Net every day.

Please also enjoy the yearbook message written by the boy I had the WORST crush on. I remember I about peed my acid-wash pants when I saw the “hint, hint” part of his note. He was totally into the Punisher, CAN YOU TELL.

More years down the road, I think I was maybe 20 here. I was coming out of my goth phase in bits and pieces: still surly, still addicted to unflattering red lipstick, still dyeing my (ohmygodLONG) hair, but obviously was willing to forgo the standard black uniform for a frumpy flowered dress. I’m vaguely thrilled to see that I looked far more matronly 15 years ago than I do now.

Check it out: lame trying-too-hard Flickr self-portrait, before Flickr! Or digital cameras!

And then . . . hmm, not much documentation of my early 20s. I had, like, a LOT of hangovers.

Last one, I promise. This was taken eight years ago or so: JB and I before the children stole our youth were even a remotely serious consideration. I feel like I look pretty much the same as I do now, but what was JB, TWELVE? (SO CUTE OMG.)

All RIGHTY then, I think that’s more than enough. Thanks for coming with me on this humiliating stroll down memory lane! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to start an orthodontia fund for the kids — I have a bad feeling they’ll need it.

I am getting old and cranky, which I suppose is mildly better than old and gaseous like our aging Lab, but now that I think about it I sit around ripping enormous farts delicate emissions every single goddamned time I eat cherries (WTF, cherries? What are they made out of, PURE METHANE?) these days, so great, I’m old and gassy AND cranky. You kids get off my lawn afore I blast you out with mah rump-trumpet.

ANYWAY. I’ve noticed that I am increasingly irritated by certain terms, which are perfectly benign when taken out of Annoying Person context, but once they’re wielded like a self-righteous lightsaber formed entirely of catshit, they’re damn near intolerable. For instance: vegan, organic, attachment.

Hey, I’m all for saving the earth. I like the earth, I totally live here and everything. I think people are awesome for deciding not to eat animals and choosing to use natural cleaning products and reducing their carbon footprints and happily wearing children strapped to their bodies 24/7, I really do.

BUT. If you decide it’s your holy right to give me a raft of crap for using paper towels or putting my kids in their own rooms to sleep or not wetting my pants over ingredient lists or eating a turkey burger, I swear it makes me want to cram a child-labor-produced formaldehyde off-gassing BPA-loaded cow-torturing environmentally-unfriendly bottle-feeding SUV right in your pious piehole.

(And by you I don’t mean you, duh. YOU are super. Are you doing something different with your ass? Because it’s looking so . . . so buoyant. Can I grab it, just a little? Just cup a cheek? One cheek?)

I think some of us are just getting a little hysterical. Seriously, when did admitting that you use fabric softener become a confession on par with “Oh, when I’m not performing unwanted sex acts on minors, I’m usually, you know, clubbing Harbor seal pups or defecating on religious artifacts”? It’s LAUNDRY. SHUT UP. If you’re running your yap in order to criticize, shut it UP about your bicycle, your Starbucks ban, your devotion to raw foods, your aversion to all chemicals, your intolerance for formula feeding, and your sustainably-harvested hand-woven baby sling.

Whew. See? Old, cranky. Someone pass the caffeinated phosporic acid. Also: Gas-X.

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