wow

Apparently the doc that saved my kid's life has been arrested for rape and assault and battery on his estranged wife. I would be remiss in not reporting to you all that the argument began over Red Sox tickets. Also, that the wife reports he's been verbally and physically abusive for the past few months and she attributes that to steroids he is taking for his ears.

Okay, now that all those tragic yet hilarious facts and/or allegations are out of the way, let's discuss my shock. I literally think of this man as The Guy Who Saved D's Life. He was the one who said let's stop messing around, trying this drug and that drug, and go to the clozapine. He was the one who kept him in when the insurance company wanted him released, because he knew he wasn't close to stable yet. And more than that, he was the guy I'd see on the ward on weekend afternoons in shorts and a tee shirt, who always, if he saw me in the hall, would pull me aside to talk, to ask for my input on how things were going and what I was observing, and then would actually pay attention to what I'd told him. He seemed like a smart doctor, but he also seemed like a good guy. The whole beating up a woman over bad Red Sox tickets and then allegedly raping her didn't seem like the kind of behavior I would expect from him.

I hope he's innocent!

xoxo

this is why men should have absolutely no say regarding women's reproductive health

This nonsense right here. Contraception is not just the purview of (what these dudes imagine as) slutty teenagers and college girls, the thoughts of whom they most likely beat off to every night. Nice married (OMG, church-going!) women depend on birth control pills, implants, IUDs, and so forth as well. Let's say, conservatively, that the average woman spends 30 years of her life both fertile and sexually active. Let's say that average woman has two children, both of whom she spent three months trying to conceive, and both of whom she nursed for 6 months (not that you're supposed to count that as contraception, I hasten to add.) Let's say neither she nor her spouse gets surgically taken care of post the second baby and they stay married to each other. Okay, maybe that's not average anymore, but stay with me. Let's say that before she enters into her long-lasting marriage the woman has a couple of dry spells in between relationships.

This woman will need some sort of birth control for 25 years.

Not to mention that many many many women are on hormonal birth control even if they're not sexually active or with fertile partners, just to regulate their hormones/menstrual periods. (Does the Pope oppose that, too?)

But, no, birth control pills just exist so loose skanks who don't know how to keep their legs closed don't get knocked up with 15 illegitimate children. Wait. Are we supposed to want loose skanks to have 15 illegitimate children? Yo, Republicans? Wouldn't that cost taxpayer dollars somehow somewhere?

In summary, if you do not now or have not ever possessed a uterus and a coupla ovaries, shut the fuck up about women's shit. Thank you.

Bastards.

xoxo

did I mention that i hate...

Pete Bouchard?

Last night D fell asleep watching TV in his room, so at eleven when I was going upstairs I went in to wake him up to tell him to take his bedtime pills. This unfortunately coincided with Mr Bouchard appearing on D's television, where he proceeded to tell me that there's a storm forming out by Las Vegas which will be here by Sunday and could be OMFG! a major nor'easter, as bad as the one in October which OMFG! caused all those power outages! Oh and btw? All the computer models are showing it going south of us. BUT MAYBE THAT WON'T HAPPEN AND YOU WILL DIE!!!!!!!!! I mean, the jet stream would have to totally change but OMG! OMFG! START WORRYING NOW!!!! Just in case.

I can't even. I said some very bad words in the direction of the TV.

Mr Indemnity forwarded me an article yesterday, as is his wont, under the email subject line "France socializes the vagina." He's very lucky the coffee I spewed did not end up on my laptop keyboard. All I'm sayin'. He then told me I ought to blog about this development. Um, the socialized vaginas, not the coffee spewage. However, we the management of The Adventures do not take requests. Sorry! Besides, I can only get worked up about one thing at a time and today is Mr Bouchard's turn. Again.

xoxo

more questions, comments, and general stuff

I know I'm just talking to myself, but, hey, if you cannot amuse yourself, whom can you amuse?

1.) Question! Do you ever see old people smoking and think, "Damn. Beat the odds."?

2.) Question! Do you ever read my writing and realize I have very little idea how to properly punctuate most shiz?

3.) Question! Be that as it may, do you ever follow that train of thought about the old people smoking and then think, "They must be really stupid. It's only been about 40 years since every single person in America has known smoking causes cancer and they haven't decided to quit yet?"

4.) Question! Do you then realize that since they've lived to be old and haven't succumbed to cancer yet, maybe they're having the last laugh?

5.) Question! Does the phrase "be that as it may" actually mean anything if you stop to think about it?

6.) Comment! I appear to be having my period again. Question! Does this mean I have successfully reversed my menopause and I can quit worrying about vaginal atrophy for a while?

7.) Comment! I had a rack pull PR (<--"personal record", keep up, would you?) last night in the gym and I would like to brag: 185x3. I think this means I am close to being able to deadlift any of you all. Well, maybe if you were more ergonomically shaped. I could probably drag you out of a burning building though, especially if my adrenaline kicked in! This is why you want to be my friend.

8.) Comment! I have spared all y'all all kinds of celeb news. If you don't know that Oprah is Beyonce and Jay-Z's baby's godmother or that Rihanna is ::sad face:: friends with (i.e. most likely fucking) Chris Brown again, it is probably my fault.

9.) Comment! An online acquaintance of mine from RI is doing "anti-gravity yoga" which basically involves being suspended from the ceiling by bungee cords. It looks *awesome*. Questions! Why don't we have that here? How can RI possibly be more advanced than Massachusetts in anything? It's the same damn place, just smaller.

10.) Rhetorical question! How much are the Red Sox gonna suck this year? Prediction: epic suckage! Epic!

11.) Well wishes! Happy Friday, kids!

xoxo

49 2/12ths

...and I did something an hour or so ago that I have never done before. I took completely naked pictures of myself.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Late to the party. Digital cameras have been around for, what?, 15 years? Plus, we
did have Polaroid back in the day. But here it is, 2012, and just now I am getting around to doing something every sexting 15 year old does before they finish freshman year.*** Should have done it years ago. It's very instructive. Here's what I learned.

1.) Naked pictures can look better than, say, underwear pictures because (in my case, anyway) the underwear just bisects one's fat and calls attention to it and makes it bulge in ways it wouldn't when it's set free. Free your adipose!

2.) Finding the side/camera angle which makes you look best is very pleasing. I kinda knew from all the underwear shots I've taken of myself in the bulking/dieting progress pictures what view of me looks "best", but naked? Boobs look best from that angle too! Win-fucking-win situation, kids. I cropped my face/head out of the two pictures I liked best and saved them on this laptop. I intend to look at themwhenever I feel old/fat/ugly/undesirable and delude myself into thinking I really look to other people the way I look in those shots. And should this computer ever get stolen, que sera sera. I defy anyone to prove they're me. None of my identifiable marks are showing and that could be anyone's bathroom door. The towels hanging on it came from Tarzhay. I'm fairly sure approximately 2.4 million other people have exactly the same ones.

3.) Taking naked shots of yourself from your bad side/angle and living to tell about it is also pleasing. Many of us female type people have spent years of our lives not wanting anyone to see us fully undressed, never mind documenting it. Looking at the non-good pics and realizing the world hasn't come to an end is another step to freeing yourself from body shame and self-hatred. It lessens the power that kind of thing can have.****

I think that's all I have to say about that.

xoxo

***I'm not sexting mine to anyone. Settle the fuck down.

****Tangent: I took a life drawing class once with nude models and I subsequently always wanted to be one of those models. A.) because I would be awesome at it--I can hold perfectly still for long periods of time no problem. B.) I realized that this was probably the most purely nonjudgmental situation in which anyone would ever look at me naked and that, mired in my occasional/frequent bodily self-loathing as I was at the time, that would be very therapeutic for me.

well, that was disappointing

But I prefer to think of it as a benign and loving Supreme Being saying, "Bitch, please. I gave you a body that people will pay you millions of dollars to stick lingerie on and then walk down a runway. Now you want your husband to win his football game too? Talk to me again when you're praying for world peace or something."




However the snacks and drinks were good at my house and I did enjoy the car commercial with the vampire tailgate party!




And it's February 6. Look out your window. Is there snow on the freakin' ground? Life is good. I rest my case.

xoxo

questions and comments

Question #1: is it wrong to leave the gym and go directly across the street for a beer? What if you have beer *and* a salad with chicken on it? Shut up, I'm pre-gaming for the Superbowl.

Comment: speaking of the Superbowl, remember how in 2010 I said that if they kept up the trend in half-time musical performers, pretty soon they's have to feature someone/some band that was actually, y'know, *dead*? Well, last year they backslid and had someone non-geriatric (if sucky) but this year we are back to Madonna. Now, Madonna is not The Who, but she also has to wear half-gloves to cover her old lady hands. All I'm sayin'.

Question #2: isn't Wachusett Blueberry good? <--related to question #1. Keep the fuck up, wouldya.

Comment: I saw something really sad when I was entering work yesterday. A woman on her cell, half-sobbing, on a bench outside the hospital, dressed in a t-shirt, shorts, a leather jacket, and boots. Evidently she came to the ED in the middle of the night with someone, dressed in what she was sleeping in + the first shoes and coat that came to hand. It was heartbreaking. Especially since the part of her phone conversation I could hear as I passed was, "...I've got no one else to talk to..."

Question #3: I've worked in healthcare my entire working life--when am I gonna harden the fuck up to shit like that?

Question #4 and comment: how hipster *is* downtown Salem these days? I give you as evidence: Gulu Gulu and Coven on the same block, two chichi pet boutiques within a stone's throw of each other, and (as came to my attention yesterday, though it may be old news) two bike shops on the same street. I have no problem with any of this. I do have a problem, however, with the fact that since Coven is closed for vacay, there is apparently a shortage of places with coffee + WiFi. I tried to get coffee and a snack after the gym yesterday, but at 4pm on a Saturday I could not get a seat at Gulu, Starbucks, or the Front Street Cafe (which I'm not even sure has WiFi because I never go there). Who the fuck are these hipsters and why are they all drinking coffee on a Saturday afternoon?

Comment: uh, go Pats! Brady, I still hate you and your supermodel wife, but I gotta pull for my hometown team outta civic pride.

xoxo

no brown-clad babies for me

I am out of love with my UPS driver. Well, actually, I must have a new one and he's the one on my bad list.

Through the miracle of online tracking, I knew my package from bodybuilding.com was due to be delivered yesterday. Somewhere around 6:30pm, I thought, hmmm, I better go check outside my front door, because perhaps I didn't hear the doorbell while I was upstairs. (My UPS driver's usual motus operandi is to come somewhere in late afternoon, give my bell one ring so I know he's been there, and drop my box in front of the door. Usually I get to the door in time to wave at him and say "thanks!" as he's getting back into his truck.)

There was no package. I go online and track. Oh! According to them it was delivered to me at 2:43pm and *left at my front door*. I (of course) panic and freak out. I go outside and recheck the area outside the door, not that I could possibly have missed a small-to-medium sized box there or anything. I navigate the UPS website to find a contact number. I call said number. Their phone tree gives me a.) absolutely no option to talk to a actual person--there's no "...or stay on the line and an associate will assist you." and b.) no option to report a lost package. I navigate the website some more.There's sorta kinda a place to report a lost package but it needs to be from the sender.

I say many bad words. Then I go on the bodybuilding.com site and find their customer service email. I write them a note, explaining my problem and the fact that I live on a cul-de-sac and there's absolutely no traffic past my front door, so I am pretty damn sure no one stole my supplements. (Plus, as I said to my weightlifting buddies, who would steal a box from bodybuilding.com if they don't go to the gym? It's not like it would have looked like it contained electronics or something.) Bodybuilding.com, in a display of stellar customer service, emails me back almost immediately. My representative "Matt" asks me to confirm my address (correct) and suggests that I check with the neighbors to make sure none of them has my package. If they do not, he will file a claim with UPS.

Well, I am pretty sure that if my package was left on any of the neighbors front doors, they would have walked it back down the hill. They may primarily be a bunch of douchebags, but face it, they don't want my creatine either. However, I figure I will take a little walk and see if there's a package outside anyone's door that has not been found yet. I have no luck, but as I am walking back down the hill, and thus approaching my house from an entirely different angle, I see my box. It was not left at my "front door." It was placed inside the base of the basketball hoop in my driveway. The UPS man, apparently new and not knowing my neighbors are not larcenous, had apparently hidden my box from being seen from the street. He did such a fabulous job, he hid it from me as well. Goddamn it.

I email "Matt" back to tell him all is well and I praise his quick response to my problem. He writes back and thanks me for my "awesome" email. No lie.

And can I just say, this all could have been avoided by the UPS tracking saying that my package was delivered *to my driveway*, not to my front door. Then I would have searched the yard first before panicking.

So, yes, not happy with UPS anymore and I hope my regular driver is just on vacation or something. But at least I will be sure to check the bushes n' shit the next time I'm expecting anything.

xoxo

going all ebert on your asses

In the last week, I have seen three movies, totally because I realized that I'd seen absolutely nothing that was nominated for anything and because these three movies were playing at the (slightly) cheap(er) and very convenient theater. Plus, did I mention? My bank balance was looking satisfactory.

Movie #1: The Descendants

I don't think this is a spoiler, because it's all in the friggin' trailer to the movie, but this is a film in which George Clooney becomes a Better Man and a Good Dad when he finds out his comatose and soon-to-be-taken-off-life-support wife had been cheating on him. I have three things to say about this film.

First thing: the beginning twenty minutes or so of it are so freaking slow and boring that had I not been sitting in the middle of a row, I might seriously have thought about getting up and leaving, which is something I never, ever do. After that, however, it picks up and I ended up quite enjoying it. I'm not sure Clooney is a great actor, but he does hold your attention on the screen. Second thing: this is exactly the kind of movie that always gets nominated for an Oscar. It's supposed to instruct us or illuminate for us the human condition, blah blah blah. I read an interview recently--I think it was Brad Pitt talking about why he chose to star in Moneyball, even though he's not a baseball fan--and the point was made that somewhere in the 80s or 90s, it became mandatory for the characters in a film to Grow and Change by the end of the film, and Moneyball was more of a throwback to the 70s kind of movie, where the character stays the same but maybe the world around him/her just shifts a little, and that was the appeal. Well, Brad's friend George's movie is a stunning example of the Grow and Change cliche. I mean, there's absolutely no surprise to the ending. (slight spoiler) Do we really think his little family is *not* gonna pull together and become closer and more functional? Do we really think he's *not* gonna make the noble business decision that's good for the people of his state, rather than the one that'll net him a huge amount of easy money? The only interesting twist to that is that the noble business decision also screws the guy who was screwing his wife, so at least there's a little depth there. Third thing: if I had known this movie was by the guy who did Sideways, I'd have never have gone to it, because that, along with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, is one of my top two acclaimed movies of recent years that I hate with the fiery passion of a million suns. So, yeah, it's a good thing I didn't realize! Final Grade: B.

Movie #2: Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close

Another movie that is exactly the kind that always gets nominated for an Oscar, this one because it's supposed to be terribly touching and sad and uplifting and blah blah blah. It didn't touch me at all, yo. I could not have cared less about the kid in it and his healing from his beloved father's death in 9/11. The kid was obnoxious and unsympathetic. And I say this as someone who sobs every time she watches The Sixth Sense*** which it pinged for me slightly, even though there's no similarity between them other than being about a weird fatherless boy in pain. I am really over people with mental differences (this kid is supposed to be maybe Aspergers, maybe not) as protagonists just because their weirdness allows the film-maker or author to then do things with the plot that they couldn't if the character was "normal." (Know what other film I fucking despise? Forrest Gump. Yeah.) I also realized when watching this movie that there's probably never been a Tom Hanks movie that I've seen that I actually liked, though I will admit I've managed to avoid some of his most popular movies. This is not due to any dislike of Mr Hanks per se, not as a person or as an actor. I think I just don't like his taste in scripts! Finally, and this is probably a spoiler, but I have a plot question. When the kid meets The Renter, is that a set-up by his mother/grandmother so he'll have someone to watch over him on his search, and I'm supposed to infer that when his mother later reveals that she knew what was going on all along? Because otherwise, it makes no sense that his grandmother was out in the middle of the night. I mean elderly Jewish ladies from the Old Country are not known for being party animals. I mean, as far as *I* know. Also, the fact that The Renter was mute was another example of a ridiculous plot contrivance. I realize that's the fault of the author of the book, and not the filmmaker, but whatev. Final grade: C-.

Movie #3: My Week With Marilyn

I liked this one the best. No "message" but it was charming and touching and the acting was very good. I think they did a good job of showing just how fucked up Marilyn was while still making her sympathetic. And it was short. And the makeup/clothes/scenery were cool. And I would definitely read the book this one was based on. Maybe it was just more my type of film than the other two, but I enjoyed it. Final grade: A-

That's it, kids!

xoxo

***I was writing this review in my head the other night on my way home and I could not think of the title of this movie. It was on the tip of my brain and driving me insane and I couldn't wait to actually get home and look it up. So I texted Mr Indemnity "Dude! Help! What's the name of the movie about the kid who sees ghosts and Bruce Willis is his dead shrink?" But because I was trying to text with my gloves on, I accidentally texted it to M2 first. Twelve hours later when she finally checked her texts, she wrote back "Dude! It's the sixth sense. The ONLY good movie by m night shyamalan." Which frankly was hilarious. I will also say Mr Indemnity did *not* make his usual dig about how if I had an iPhone I could have looked it up myself. He's slipping!