In addition to this being my kids’ first ever visit to the Happiest Place on Earth, it may as well be mine, since I haven’t been here since I was around my kids’ age. I don’t remember much about it, since that would have been in 1970. Which is to say, a) I’m not an expert on the place; and, b) holy shitballs I’m old! Which brings me to my first gripe:

1. All the parents are like 12. I don’t know if this is typical of this place, but I’m struck by how many young–like really young–couples there are here with kids the same age as ours. I’m not ageist or anything, but, c’mon kids, we mature parents don’t want to see you running around all spry and shit, with your healthy joints and bag-free eyes, not getting nauseous on the teacup rides, and holding hands like you were on a date. I don’t care about your lifestyle: I just don’t appreciate you throwing it in my face.
2. There’s no beer sold at Disneyland. How did I not know this? It wouldn’t have been a big deal had I been mentally prepared for this absurd policy. But around noon of Day 1, all I wanted was a nice cold adult beverage. I would have eaten communion wafers for lunch if I could have washed them down with a chilly IPA, but that wasn’t an option, so I ate a 4000-calorie deep-fried ham and cheese sandwich instead, with some iced tea. Thanks for the diabeetus, Mickey.
3. Other People’s Children. Lots of them. ‘Nuff said. Also, their parents.
4. To the sensitive toddler, a lot of Disney stuff is hella-scary. My kids don’t watch much TV at all, and when they do, it’s either Elmo or… yeah–pretty much Elmo. The only reason they know about Mickey and Minnie is because their images were featured on some diapers their grandma bought them. The characters that leer at them and pop out of dark nooks in many of the rides for little kids are as foreign and freaky to them as Freddy Krueger.  The kids’ panic transmits directly into my hippocampus. In addition to the height requirement for these rides, there should be a startle-test.   
5. There’s no beer sold at Disneyland.

Now watch. Even if you only have time for the first few minutes I will be thrilled. I know you’re  moaning and groaning because I did the same thing. I don’t typically watch a lot of stuff online, but this is an EXCEPTIONAL exception. If you want to change your life and other women’s lives, you will press play.

Part I:

Part II:

Do you watch commercials? Do you read magazines? Do you look at billboards? Do you see other kinds of advertising everywhere? If you’re like me, you don’t really pause to consider it all that much. But since I watched this I haven’t been able to STOP thinking about it. We think that as women we’ve come so far, but now I’ve realized we have an extra long way to go. And the saddest part is that it’s not only men contributing to this, but women as well!

So let’s promise ourselves not to buy into this stuff anymore. Let’s vow to stand together, work together to change these kinds of attitudes so that they become unacceptable. I have a stack of magazines right now in my living room that are going into the recycling bin–right after I put together a vlog about the ads I tear out of them. I bet if you hunt around, you can find some, too? Pitch ‘em. We can’t prompt change if we don’t start somewhere, even if it’s a small somewhere. Literally, I’m not buying into it. And neither should you.

I’m begging you to watch and share this. Even if you can’t watch it in its entirety, just try the first two or three minutes. I promise you will be HOOKED. I promise the video will change your life and how you think. Forever.

Women are not objects. We are not just our body parts. We are not just things.

We all have flaws. And they don’t need to be camouflaged.

Source: Killing Us Softly 4, Jean Kilbourne

He’d be groovy. Because Jesus invented groovy.

You’ve had a hectic day even though it’s only 10 a.m. You get in the car to go to the park with the toddler and realize you’ve forgotten snacks, so you stop and get nuggets and fries and a maybe a meat foam Bic Mac sandwich for yourself.

Upon arrival at the park, you are greeted with the Whole Foods Mafia at the picnic tables glaring at you like you work at one of those labs that test eye shadow on baby bunnies. My first thought:

Hey, Whole Foods Mafia, ask yourself … what would Jesus do?

I’ll tell you what he’d do… er, say…

Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

Word, Jesus. Get groovy, Whole Food Mafia, and lavage those logs out of those beady non-bunny-tested-shadowed eyes.

Twenty-four hour grooviness is for perfect people, though. The rest of us need to pepper the perfection of groovy with badass.

So when groovy won’t cut it, instead of WWJD, consider…

WHAT WOULD CHRISTOPHER WALKEN DO??

He would not be groovy.

He would be badass. I admittedly feel groovy most of the time; often, though, I feel badass.

If your parents give you a hard time about how they don’t understand why you don’t come home for every. SINGLE. holiday known to MODERN humankind, ask yourself… WWCWD?!

I’ll tell you:

[Mom, Dad,] From now till kingdom come, the only thing you can count on in your existence is never understanding why.

If your cell phone company refuses to renegotiate your rates even though you’ve been with them for almost as long as you’ve been married, ask yourself … WWCWD? He’d do this.

You’re talking to me all wrong… It’s the wrong tone. You do it again and I’ll stab you in the face with a soldering iron. Hey, tell me, does your mother sew? BOOM. Get her to sew that!

Your husband is at it again and thinks he’s (hahahahaha) right about whatever. Ask yourself. WWCWD?!

What part of “sudden death” didn’t you understand?

Finally, if Christopher Walken had a deadline at 8 a.m. tomorrow and had no idea what he was going to write about tonight but got his post done in twenty minutes? I’d tell you what he’d do… he’d do… THIS.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go find an escalator and a large painting of some sailboats. And some wires.

Can you figure out which movies these little gems of wisdom came from? Leave it in the comments and win absolutely nothing except mad props from me.  Priceless.

Photo Credit

10 a.m.Wheeler Farm: Kids feed ducks.
I step in pig poo.

12:30 p.m. Dinosaur Museum: Kids brush sand off dinosaur fossils. I forget protective goggles and get a sandcastle in my eyes.

3 p.m. Rec. Center: Kids love 10-foot twisty water slide. I get unexpected slide-douche.

I regain consciousness racing down Bangerter Highway in search of the one place you can get alcohol in this God-ridden land, the State Liquor Store. It’s a bleak, cinder-block bunker that looks like a prison for three-strike hard timers and Charlie Sheen.

I scan the parking lot like a pantyless celebutante about to make a crack buy, take a deep breath, exit my vehicle and sidle to the store.

Hey! They’ve got good wine just like at my local Trader Joe’s. I’m starting to feel normal again until I realize there are only two customers in the store. A man with tattoos of lizard scales on his face wearing a baseball cap with the word “Pussy” stitched into it and me.

How many bottles should I get? I’m the only drinker in the house. We’ll be staying five days, so… two bottles? But if I get two bottles that’s about eight glasses of wine and I don’t want to seem like someone with a problem.

I bring one bottle of Kendall Jackson to the cashier, asking where they keep their corkscrews. “We don’t carry corkscrews,” she deadpans.

10 minutes later I’m pillaging the grocery store where they don’t sell wine, but they do sell corkscrews–in the feminine protection aisle. I can’t go to the cashier with just a corkscrew. What’ll she think of me? She’s on her way to the Celestial level of heaven where you get to be a God in your own right.

If I buy this corkscrew I’m not getting into the lesser Kingdoms of Heaven, not even the spirit prison where the dead missionaries give you a chance to be baptized. Is there anything between the spirit prison and Hell?

I hand the cashier a box of OB tampons and my corkscrew, sweating as she rings it up. She’s smiling, but her flared nostrils are judging me. They’re saying, “You reek of unworthiness.”

I return to my brother’s where everyone has eaten, gone to bed, gotten up the next day, gone to the park and come back to watch Spongebob.

I ransack the cupboard for a wine glass, finding only plastic water cups and ceramic Postum mugs. Aha! There’s one drinking vessel made of glass. It has Sleeping Beauty’s castle and my nephew’s name etched on it. I cork and pour.

When in Utah, I’m an alcoholic.

Photo Credit

As a young girl with newly emerging hips and breasts, the 15-year-old will shy away from a construction site, walking the long way around in order to avoid them. If unavoidable, she will scurry past as quickly as her mini-skirted legs will carry her, head down to hide her furious blushing. She doesn’t want lecherous old men the age of her dad looking at her; her body is strictly for the boys at school to ogle.

The 23-year-old will stomp boldly pass the construction workers, having first crossed over to the other side of the road before coming into view. She will stare straight ahead, head held high, with her eyes fixed pointedly in the middle distance. She will curse her clickety heels for drawing attention as she swears profanities under her breath at the misogynistic sexist pigs.

The 28-year-old mother of two will be too fraught with anxiety to even notice that there is a construction site, except to retrieve the shoe her offspring has lodged in the safety fence surrounding it. There is no need to hide her figure (the double stroller will take care of that), and besides, the workers have already heard her toddler wailing two blocks away and have mentally shut down all sensory organs.

The power-dressed 35-year-old will stride confidently past, cell phone burning hot into her ear as she attends to a conference call. She knows that they’ll wait until she’s passed before they remark on her expensive gym-toned ass. She is one step ahead and has already drafted an email to the construction company’s head office on her BlackBerry, complaining of sexual harassment whilst simultaneously getting the number off the plumber’s truck to get a quote for her new kitchen.

And finally, the 45-year-old woman will know of the exact location of all construction sites within a three-mile radius. She’ll deliberately park next to one when running errands, often making two or three journeys to and fro until her tottering wiggle finally catches the eye of the aging foreman. She will curse her luck that she didn’t receive her wolf whistle from one of the younger, more firm-bodied specimens of construction workers present, but will consider it a marginal success before she moves onto the next site.

Photo Credit

First, a disclaimer: I’d never recommend that you lean over the tub with a cell phone like the woman in the above photo. Second, if you look that rested anytime of the day or night AND you’re in the tub, I want to point out that this is Aiming Low. You know that, right?

That said, the bubble bath mixture I’m about to share with you will at least make you feel this rested because it costs about .75 cents to fill a spaghetti jar. You’ll only need five things:

1. Five minutes
2. A container (I used glass but my kids are older)
3. 1.5 cups baby shampoo (generic brand is perfectly fine)
4. 1 cup water
5. Essential oil (I used 10 drops of lavender)

Mix them together. Shake. Done. (I got the recipe out of the book A Guide to Being a Goddess.) The thing about this stuff? Completely okay to bathe AND wash your hair and the smell is strangely lovely. I know,  .75 cents. You love me, right?

Do not let the fact that this looks like beer or urine keep you from making this bubble bath!

]]> http://aiminglow.com/2012/02/cheap-and-easy-bubble-bath/feed/ 0 http://aiminglow.com/2012/02/10-versions-of-over-the-rainbow-i-have-a-little-obsession/ http://aiminglow.com/2012/02/10-versions-of-over-the-rainbow-i-have-a-little-obsession/#comments Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:00:03 +0000 Schmutzie http://aiminglow.com/?p=36335 I have a long history with “Over the Rainbow,” the  Academy Award-winning song from The Wizard of Oz with music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by E.Y. Harburg. I grew up watching and rewatching the movie, fascinated by Dorothy’s ability to enter completely different realities. Even when she comes back home at the end of the movie, her world is new to her again!

Judy Garland’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” became an anthem of sorts for those terrible days between the ages of ten and fifteen when puberty tortured me without sympathy:

This is where I let you know that clicking on these videos will take you to YouTube,
because I couldn’t get the videos to embed like it’s 2012.

I rented The Wizard of Oz on VHS tape and rewound it over and over so that I could write down all the lyrics to “Over the Rainbow.” I performed it in the rare moments that I was left alone at home, a towel draped over my head as a makeshift wig, imagining that my rendition was every bit as beautiful and touching as Garland’s.

It turns out that I was not alone. “Over the Rainbow” is one of the most covered songs on the planet, and I’ve spent a good portion of the last two days chasing down its many incarnations on YouTube. Here are 10 versions of “Over the Rainbow” sung by Judy Garland, Norah Jones, The Ramones, the cast of television’s Glee, Ella Fitzgerald, Kylie Minogue, Rufus Wainwright, Ben Webster, Tori Amos and Israel Kamakawiwo’ole.

Norah Jones:

The Ramones:

The cast of Glee:

Ella Fitzgerald:

Kylie Minogue:

Rufus Wainwright:

Ben Webster:

Tori Amos:

I saved this one by the late Israel Kamakawiwo’ole for last, because it is, by far, my favorite version of “Over the Rainbow” for all time forever and ever sweet hell yes. It’s silvery and light and hopeful and pretty makes my grey skies blue:

Wasn’t that fantastic?

Is there any song that you’re obsessed with and that you might be found belting out while wearing a towel wig?

(Oh my God. I just got a bit faint at the very idea of 9 1/4 hours of sleep.)

If you are one of these teens cashing in your, “sorry, I can’t help you with that, I need to be sleeping” cards, you might want to sit down, because I have a bit of news for you. A new study has just come out and the results proclaim that teens only need seven hours of sleep a night.

And these guys kicked it up a notch. Not only do they say you only NEED seven hours, they say that you will rock school work better with logging in seven hours with the Sandman instead of nine.

When I was in high school my favorite weekend activity was sleep. Life was haaaaaaaaaard. I was stressed out about my extracurricular activities, about whether of not my teachers liked me (yes, I was needy), and about preparing my college applications. When the going got tough I was relieved that I was able to retreat to my teenage lair, slip into my plaid jammies and just slip into slumber.

So maybe, scientifically, I didn’t need to catch up on my shut-eye, but emotionally? HECK YES I did. These new sleep studies are coming out after decades of people being told we just need to get more rest. At this point I am going to guess that if you are reading this site you are a smart cookie, and smart cookies know that they know their bodies best. So if you need a power nap before you can sing your power ballad, go for it.

Sleep studies are for sheep.

Photo Credit: Casey David via photopin cc