I’m a smart person. Mostly. There are times, however, when I wonder how I am able to function without harming myself or others.

I’m embarrassed to tell you how long it was before I realized that a bookmark magnet was actually a magnet like you put on the fridge and NOT a magnetic book mark that I was somehow too dumb to use and may have almost torn apart trying to figure out how to separate its non-existent parts to get it to work.

And by work, I mean somehow magnetically mark my page in the book I was reading.  Which I don’t even know why that’s a thing, because I very seldom read books that have metal components.

There was the morning when I decided to soak some new sheets in a last ditch effort to get this weird smell out [a weird petro-chemical smell, probably from the plastic bag they were stored in, but COULD HAVE BEEN a secret plot to spread some sarin-type gas attack distributed through packages of 500 thread count sheets from Bed Bath and Beyond. Who knows for sure?] before I finally decided to say fuck it and return them.

Anyway, I went down to the laundry room and set the washer to soak [after having washed the sheets at least 4 times - second rinse each time. Suck it, diminishing water table.], and came back upstairs.

While eating my DELICIOUS oatmeal, I heard this weird noise, this gurgle gurgle gurgle. At first I thought it was one of the cats [she slurps licking herself], and then I realized it was COMING FROM DOWNSTAIRS.

Fuck.

I wondered how I would deal with whatever watery catastrophe was on hand and mustered up my courage, following the sound into the laundry room, hoping for a chainsaw wielding crazy so at least I wouldn’t have to call a plumber, when I found that:

The washer wasn’t doing anything.

But the sink?

Yeah, I had left the faucet on after washing my hands. Evidently I don’t wash my hands enough to remember how to turn off the goddamn faucet.

Finally, there was the day where people kept tweeting “May the 4th be with you!” and I thought that was cute and funny and wondered if people did that on Twitter every month on the 4^th because they love Star Wars so much.

A little while later, I was listening to a radio station play Irish music and thought, “Why would the DJ play Irish music right before Cinco de Mayo? Isn’t that weird?” Like a lightning bolt, it hit me:

Cinco de Mayo.

May the 5^th.

The day after…

May the 4^th.

May the 4th be with you.

Ah.
About the Writer
Liberal. Impatient. And profane. No. Seriously. Really, really foul-mouthed.
 Find me at The Suniverse. 

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The old me is shaking her head right now as the Martha Stewart inside my head is tsk-tsking me.

Yeah. Me. Apathetic. Who knew?

I suppose I should have seen it coming. I mean, I can’t possibly say “no” to anything that might resemble work, I’m starting a non-profit and I write almost every day on my blog. I raise orchids. I have three kids. I have a house, not an apartment, to fill with crap. Hell, I have a Twitter account to follow! Who’s going to rip off pithy tweets like, “My ass smells like cheese” if not me?

(Answer: half of The Twitter.)

And because I’ve only been seeing what’s in front of me (read: my inbox), I’ve stopped seeing most everything else. Of course, this is a sign to me that I probably need to step away from the computer a bit, but alas, I digress.

Because I am hosting at least twenty people at my house this weekend for my daughter’s birthday, I realized that it was time to get my ass (which, I should clarify, does NOT smell like cheese) in gear and clean the shit out of everything. Annnddd… remodel three rooms. And don’t forget that light fixture and smoke detector that need instillation! I mean, what if people come over and don’t see a mess of smoke detectors everywhere? WHAT WILL THEY THINK?

(End hand-wringing.)

The remodeling is nearly complete, but that means the clean-up has just begun. Half an hour ago, I popped into my boys’ room to get rid of some stuff, change the sheets, and generally clean. Most of the people coming to this party are kids, so it makes sense to have a space for kids to, well, PLAY. Especially in areas that aren’t full of toxic chemicals. I figure their parents will thank me for that.

I’m horrified to report to you that I pulled not one but two gigantic bags of garbage out of a bedroom I didn’t even realize was so bad. Like, I’m so horrified that I may actually sit in the Naughty Corner awhile.

Thanks to my previous apathy, I’ll be spending the next three days solid cleaning the rest of my house.

High time to start a speed habit, huh?

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Do you know what I discovered when I was skimming through all my iPhone pictures? I take a lot of amazing pictures of my wonderful children and the only pictures I have of myself are ones I should not even be taking.

I can’t help it.

When I pose for a picture I make a face, because that feels more normal than smiling. I do a lot of really jackassy things I feel the need to document and share with friends to give them more ammo to make fun of me.

Plus, I figure if I am finding myself doing something that makes me laugh why not share it with others?

Yellow Teeth are Better Than Tasting Bleach Buttpaste

I drink a lot of coffee and red wine and my teeth are a nice shade of yellow. I decided I wanted whiter teeth and shine. The problem is that those home teeth bleaching strips taste terrible! I frightened my children walking around with them because I would drool on myself. I actually dug out baby bibs from the garage!

You Wish Your Morning Hair Was This Sexy

Sometimes I wake up with scary hair! I’m not exactly sure how it happens. While I enjoy having bangs sometimes they have a mind of their own.

Nostril Plugs Are Sexy and You Know It

I have a small nose and tiny nostrils so blowing my nose can be difficult. I’d much rather walk around with tissue up my nose than blow it constantly when my allergies are acting up.

What are some of YOUR shamelful self-portrait poses?

If someone told me what I should be doing I would do the opposite. Just because.

Isn't that the face of a perfect kid? Yup, that's me. I've changed a lot.

Or if someone doubted my ability to do something, I would push myself to prove them wrong. Do you know what happens when you tell the teenage version of me that they can’t skateboard off the roof into the pool?

Thankfully my head narrowly missed the fate that my broken skateboard suffered.

But there were still many ER trips. Never let your 15-year-old own a razor sharp katana sword and not expect her to need stitches.

Some of this lingers. If someone says to me, “You should sit down!” or, “Here have my seat,” I will respectfully decline and stand.

Not because I want to stand but because I was told to sit.

There may be reasons why I’ve been single a long time…

My dad never knew how to deal with me when I was a kid… actually, he still doesn’t. I was his princess-turned-evil queen. The more he pushed me and tried to restrict me the more I would push back. He eventually gave up and I was like a feral child.

He used to joke with me that if I ever had kids then he would finally have redemption. He would say that payback of me having a child like me was going to be his only sweet victory.

He was disappointed when my princess spawn turned out to be the sweetest thing on the planet. She has always been the kid who will go out of her way to make people happy. She is the calm balance in my heart that I needed.

But, lately my daughter has been pushing limits.

She has turned in to a defiant nine-year-old with a side of crazy. Hormones, right?

She is still that sweet lovebug… but now we argue. She pushes back. She goes against me. The other day she gave me that head turn with the obnoxious eye roll that shocked me so much I thought I was going to crap my pants.

This isn’t my kid. She’s possessed!

Then my dad told me something horrible… he said that she was exactly like me and I was like him. It’s in the genes. The grin on his face made it clear that his payback was on the horizon. I’ve never seen such an elated expression on his face.

I’m so screwed.

First, I’m going to read though the journals I kept as a teenager and laugh at my angsty teenage self. This will allow me to feel as if I’ve actually accomplished something in life, because I’m no longer worried about whether Ian likes me and if I’ll be invited to any parties that weekend.

Newsflash: Ian did like me, but not as much as he liked Sarah and no I wasn’t invited to a party that weekend because I didn’t drink.

Then I’m going to pull my hair into a ponytail, put on a graphic tee and some funky earrings and go the liquor store–yeah, I drink now that I’m an adult–and hope to get IDed.

After that I’m going to the tanning salon. What I really want is sensory deprivation tank. Those thirty-five twenty-nine years of sensory input add up. I’m pretty much touched out and fed up with the noise. And the smells. Oh God, the smells.

So seeing as there’s no sensory deprivation tank available locally and the pool is full of houndish teenage boys whooping and splashing, I figure lying in a tanning bed, slathering on some odd-smelling but strangely relaxing tanning oil and listening to ocean noises on my headphones just might do it. I’m an optimist, can’t you tell?

Then I’m off to the tattoo parlor. ‘Cause what’s a milestone without some ink to mark it? Except now that I’m 29, I’m all adult and stuff; so the tattoo will be mature and meaningful and will not include fairies, butterflies or unicorns. This is when the trip to the liquor store will come in handy. I’m going to try to stay sober until after I pick the tattoo, though.

Then once I’m dark, shiny, tattooed and plastered I’m heading to the karaoke bar. Why? ‘Cause I’ve never done karaoke. Probably for good reason. I can’t sing. But who’s going to insult my singing on my birthday?

That’s right. Probably everyone.

Then I’ll stumble home and make passionate love to my husband while smearing ourselves with the cheesecake he specially ordered to celebrate the occasion. Not my birthday. The sex. We don’t get to do it often; we need to celebrate it.

Sounds fun, right? In actual fact I’ll probably be cleaning the house, doing a teleconference or two, making a nice supper for myself and hoping my husband picks up a cake. But a girl can dream, can’t she?

How do you celebrate your big birthdays? Tell me in the comments below for a chance to win my undying jealousy.

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No, I AM a woman. See that little icon up there? It should confirm to you that–well, it’s pretty tiny so you can’t see much of anything, but one thing is for sure: I know you have chin hair too.

Whether woman, male, or combo.

Chin hair does not discriminate. But if you’re of the fallopian tube persuasion, chances are you tell no one about your stubblies except your closest friends. Which is only due to the fact that you think chin hair operates like Pinocchio: tell a lie and, poof, there’s another might-as-well-be-a-pube on the overpass you call a chin.

Or nipple.

I shit you not.

There is nipple hair.

Like I said, I have chin hair, but a close friend of mine has nipple hair. Okay, one hair on one nipple. Which she tried to shave off, then cut herself, which then made a massacre out of the shower, which then led to a lie: Heh, I uh, tripped and cut myself. 

Because the lie was to her husband, she didn’t get a second hair on her second nipple.

All bets are off had she had a third nipple.

I’m lazy. This is well established. I do not fuck around with plucking. That would be like hanging out at the beach and being all, I feel like building a sand castle grain by grain. Rather than chance getting sand in my vagina, I hop in the big truck with the even bigger rake on the back and get the sand all nice and smooth for the next day’s sunbathers from my front-end loader of a razor.

Last week my other friend went to see her waxer–very Madame Tussaud of her–and this person said: What do you want me to do about your upper lip fur?

That’s some cold blooded shit right there.

My friend should have cut her.

Not physically whipped out a blade, but silenced her with an HD camera and promises of Tim at Investigative Reports at 6 p.m. doing, well, an investigate report on Girl Code and Shit You Do Not Say.

Whenever I reveal that I shave my chin, I am met with the most fearsome cries of grab-your-pitch-fork horror I have ever heard. As if I was driving around in a white van.

You know the one.

It’s a hair. On my chin. At least it’s not on my ass.

Which is a completely different post.

About anal bleaching.

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At first, I thought it was simply my own clumsiness that caused me to go careening through the air and onto the pavement at regular intervals. Yet after years of study, I’ve finally realized: my ankle has seceded from the union of my body. It is actively trying to destroy the rest of me.

I’m not sure what my ankle will do when the rest of me perishes, so don’t ask. Ankles aren’t that smart, you know. They don’t have brains.

I’m quite sure my ankle is not supporting my body the way it should. Regularly, it rolls over when it should stay upright. My ankle has caused me to collapse from things as minor as stepping on small toys, wearing pants with cuffs or stopping suddenly.

I wish I were exaggerating.

I injured my ankle in high school and I don’t think it was appreciated. I jumped into a ten foot deep pool too energetically and snapped my ankle on the bottom. To this day, my ankle seems to be trying to punish the rest of me for the grievous error of this injury. The worst part is: I don’t think it will ever get better. When I relayed this fear to my mother, she cavalierly responded, “Welcome to old age.”

Now, I’m not that old. Although you have to take that statement with a grain of salt because my idea of old is somewhat skewed. I used to think sixty was old. However, my parents are now in their sixties and I don’t really think of them as old. They still dance ridiculously, laugh inappropriately at “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and eat tons of junk food. Granted, they do like to give tips about how to ease bowel movements. Still, it’s hard for me to truly think of them as old when they’re having raucous indoor squirt gun fights with my two year old.

So, I’ve been having trouble deciding how to deal with the traitor lurking in my very own skeletal frame. Amputation seems a bit extreme – after all, my ankle does support me a good bit of the time. Plus, I don’t want to punish my foot for my ankle’s nefarious schemes.

However, not dealing with the situation means taking the chance that my ankle will one day send me careening down a flight of stairs. I think my only option may be to purchase a Rascal to ride around on safely.

The Rascal will show everyone that my parents are truly younger than I am.

As will their squirt guns.

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Meet Zoe.

She would meet you back except she’s too busy sleeping all the damn time.

And no one bothers her about this.

No one.

The Kid isn’t all: can I have a snack? Every 2.5 seconds. And Mr. Kitty doesn’t waltz over to announce there’s no minimum on something he MUST HAVE on eBay.

Because there is no Mr. Kitty. And eBay for cats is called the animal shelter.

Plus, a snack to Zoe is a bug she never actually eats because, and this is just a guess, it’s too many calories.

See, Zoe is lazy as a mofo, thin as anything, and eats as much as she pleases.

Um, what the hell?! Why am I not a cat!

What I should have done while I was at the Halloween store was pick up a headband with some cat ears. Lots and lots of them: black ones, leopard ones, throw in some devil horns, and a cute grey/pink combo. Whenever I sat down at my laptop, the kitty bands would come out. This would signal to the family unit: kitty time = don’t bother me, ever.

The devil horns would come out when they did, in fact, bother me.  Which would then lead to a hiss and a breaking news update that: kitty has claws.

But what I’m really pissed about is that Zoe is lazy as a mofo and svelte. What kind of metabolism does this cat have? And more importantly, why is she hogging all of it for herself? Share the wealth, bitch.

Zoe: pretty please with a bug you’ll never kill on top, what is the secret to eternal laze and no muffin top?

Don’t get me wrong, I love my curves. But she’s flashed her shit way too many times for me to not ask the question. I’ve no carbed- it, weight watched-it, walked away the pounds-it, and Zoe has slept right through my grunts and groans and fat-positive picture taking. Unless she’s having Jillian Michaels nightmares, the jig is up. I’m on to you, Zoe. You can’t have your undisturbed laze and flat belly. I’m waking your ass up.

On the regular.

And you’re going to kill those bugs. The stink ones have your name written all over them.