all & sundry

My weekday breakfast routine typically doesn't stray too far outside the Frosted Mini Wheats category, but this week I decided to try something new. It was like I was visited with some divine vision from on high: Thou Shalt Taketh Peanut Butter, Milk, and Banana, and Thou Shalt Blend It, Yea, With Frozen Nonfat Vanilla Yogurt, and Lo, Thou Shalt Sucketh It Through a Plastic Straw.

The thing about my new Shake of the Gods (well, besides the no-doubt astronomical sugar content - DAMN YOU, GODS) is that we only have chunky peanut butter, and when I sit down to shlork up my breakfast, a piece of peanut almost always gets stuck halfway up the straw and I have to make what JB rudely calls "a BJ face" to hoover it through. I like to think of it as my little morning workout.

Also, drinking a shake with a straw is immensely satisfying once you get down to the dregs and you start making that SLLLSSSHHP noise, assuming you enjoy annoying the blue fuck out of your husband while he's "busy" with the newspaper (drawing NC-17 word balloon commentary all over Condoleeza Rice, that is).

Recently I decided to put a moratorium on my daily honkin-vat-o-coffee habit, which I thought would have an immediate positive effect on my personal appearance. If I wasn't dawdling over my 90th cup of Starbucks Morning Blend after breakfast, maybe I would put some actual effort into getting dressed, and put on something other than jeans and a fleece? Dust a little powder over my eyelids, paint myself a rosy pout?

NEIN. Instead, I've been using the time to slither back under the bedcovers for "just a few more minutes" with whatever book I was reading the night before. I get two paragraphs in before promptly falling into a tongue-lolling, saliva-y doze - before finally jolting upright, gaping at the alarm clock, and doing a panicked rush into the shower, without even the benefit of caffeine to keep me from trampling Dog in the process. And, of course, I have even less time to make myself presentable, which perhaps explains Wednesday's spiffy combo of crooked pigtails (reminder: I am nearly 31 years old) and a sweater that I later discovered had an old - wait for it! - coffee stain on the front. Boy, if that isn't a free ride when you've already paid, eh, Alanis?

I tried to give JB some shit the other morning when he was showering and I was brushing my teeth. Referring to the small collection of men's bath products that have slowly accumulated on our shelves, I told him he was turning metrosexual.

"I am NOT," he said, stung. "I have maybe two things in here."

"Three," I said. "Remember when you used to wash your face with Pert? Aw, you're growing up!"

"Well," he groused, "why don't I just count up all the shit YOU'VE got in here? One, two, three, four, five..."

"Hey, I'm a girl! This is normal!"

"Seven, eight, nine, ten - CHRIST - eleven..."

"Okay, maybe -"

"Sixteen, SEVENTEEN. Seventeen containers of crap! In our shower! No wonder all this junk falls all over the place all the time!"

I had no response, really. It's true, the assortment of body washes, shampoos, conditioners, soaps, bath gels, and face gunk I've collected over time is sort of out of control. And JB's right, about half of them go tumbling into the tub every time Dog's tail sweeps the rim.

While I do like to tease JB (hey! is that a PANDA?), he's pretty much as non-metrosexual as you can get. His hair is 1/4" long, so, you know, not a whole lot of work there. His basic trajectory from the shower to the front door in the morning includes a cursory glance in the mirror to make sure there's not, like, a piece of pizza hanging off his shirt, but that's about it.

Me, I need prep work, and this namby-pamby business of going back to bed in the morning is doing me no good. Maybe I should switch to decaf.

Jesus. Decaf.

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