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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
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  • 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

I was at the tanning salon this afternoon (I know, okay? I know) and the Jersey Shore extra behind the counter asked me if I was interested in purchasing any pre- or post-tanning lotions. For the, like, totally affordable price of only $55, she told me, I could get a bottle of “Epicurious Natural Bronzing Lotion,” which has, like, natural ingredients in it.

Fifty-five dollars? For a bottle of something that looks like it’s normally used on a porn set? No thanks, I said. She asked what kind of daily moisturizer I used and I shrugged and said I thought it was something from The Body Shop.

Ohhhh, she said, in a Dramatic Tone. Yeah, see, some lotions, like the ones from Body Shop? They have this one ingredient that totally pulls the tan from your skin. Yeah, it really sucks. So, like, that’s why we recommend our lotions.

It’s quite unfortunate that the exact lotion I happen to use has this side effect of magically lightening skin tone, although perhaps had Michael Jackson known about the results of using coconut-scented Body Butter, he could have saved a boatload of cash back in the day.

In other news of weekend bullshittery, JB and I visited a furniture store yesterday to look for something to replace one of our horribly uncomfortable destroyed-by-children couches. We found one that seemed to be decent, and it had a pricetag we thought we could live with.

This is vinyl, right? asked JB, running his hand over its surface.

Oh no, said the sales guy. Nope, that one’s leather.

You sure? JB asked, incredulous.

Definitely, the guy assured us. 100% leather. Super durable. Did I mention we can deliver this in two days? Or you could take the floor model, save a couple bucks.

It wasn’t until we were at home researching the tag info we’d snapped a photo of that we realized it was bonded leather. Basically pieces of scrap leather puréed with plastic. Virtually guaranteed to peel or scratch or generally look like shit after a couple of rambunctious kids get near it.

I get it, I guess. I get that people work on commission and they just want to make the sale right then, because if you walk out the door the chances become much smaller that you’re ever going to come back with checkbook in hand. But, see, why not be truthful, and hope for some loyalty in return? Tell me what the cheap couch is made of and explain what that means, maybe steer me towards something else. Commiserate with me over the ridiculousness of a fifty-five-dollar lotion and maybe I’ll like your business so much I’ll buy another month of deliberately exposing my rapidly-aging body to ultraviolet radiation.

You know?

Anyway, instead of shopping around for more furniture options, we decided to swap around the chairs we already have. We moved the (actual) leather couches from the front room to the TV room, and the squashed fabric couch and pretty-but-not-super-comfy yellow chair into the front room where we rarely sit. I suppose there’s always a chance Dylan attacks the cowhide with scissors, but I guess I’m willing to risk it if the payoff is not feeling like my lower back is going to be permanently damaged from slumping on toddler-mashed cushions.

Top photos are before (and they were taken with a vastly superior camera, so pardon the many discrepancies in lighting and whatnot), bottom photos are what it looks like now.

I still sort of wish we could just go out and upgrade our furniture and re-paint some walls and maybe have a few less IKEA-purchased items and shit, have a talented designer come swooping in and magically awesome-fy my entire goddamned house…on the other hand, I’m glad we figured out how to make do with our existing stuff.

It’s so hard, sometimes, to resist the pull of want. Although in the case of fifty-five dollar body lotion, not so much.

I am greatly entertained by Dylan lately as he barrels his way through the unstable and ridiculous waters of being three. He is so con brio about everything, exploding with top-volume declarations about whatever activity is at hand, no matter how banal.

We were making our way through an overstuffed hardware store yesterday and he stopped in the aisle, turned to face me, and announced that “Mom! Mom! Dis is blowing my mind. Is it blowing your mind too Mom? Mom? IS DIS BLOWING YOUR MIND?”

(Cue twenty nearby shoppers, turning with interest to see if a selection of painter’s tape was, in fact, blowing my mind.)

While babies are often slobberingly intense in their google-eyed observances, life for toddlers is like an endless Phish concert full of happy nonsense songs, billowing clouds of sparkly smoke, and the occasional really bad trip. Dylan will spend his entire day burbling and chirping like a contented coffeemaker and talking about raccoons and helicopters and raccoons flying helicopters or whatever scenario is playing out in the bizarro landscape of his mind, then suddenly—kaboom, the clouds gather, the sky darkens, and ALL IS WOE.

As was the case last night when JB asked Dylan to pick up the 38491 wooden blocks he’d dumped on the carpet. In an emotional whiplash hairpin turn normally reserved for schizophrenics in need of heavy medication, Dylan launched into what appeared to be the tragic final death scene in a particularly harrowing opera.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO,” he intoned piteously and continuously as he bent over his unbearable task, a mournful wolf with an interminable supply of oxygen.

Five minutes later he was doing his signature Running Man dance while shouting “IT’S PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME NOW DERE YOU GO DERE YOU GO PEANUT BUTTER JELLY WID A BASEBALL BAT!”

(Why. Why did I ever let him see this.)

There are times when I think three is going to kill us all. Or maybe, more honestly, it’s that I’m occasionally not positive he’s going to survive being three. (For instance, the day he used a dry erase marker to draw on the wall right in front of me, then turned and smiled beatifically while saying, “Goddammit, right Mom?”)

Most of the time, though, I think, oh, this is my very favorite age of all.

(Except for five, maybe. Three and five is a pretty good place to be.)

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