December?

Dear Santa,

It is very mild outside today. No need to zipper the coat. No need for hat, gloves, scarf. Why is it so? Please bring me loads and loads of snow for Christmas this year. I want my mother's little house up in the country to be cocooned in a blanket of white, the hush of falling snow accenting the ripping open of holiday gifts. I want to take my niece and nephew night snowtubing on REAL snow, not that fake stuff they call snow. I want to bundle up and have snowball fights. Build a snowman and snow angels, drink hot cocoa after it all. So, please Santa, please let it snow, let it snow,
let
it
snow.

Judgment Day

I'm going to be on the beach in less than a month. Am I bathing-suit-ready? WHO CARES!!!??? I swear, the appearance-obsessed society that we live in really makes me sick. If I see another reality-TV star with gleaming white teeth (I'm sorry... I love teeth as much as the next person, but if your teeth make me have to avert my eyes lest I go blind, there is something wrong!), Botoxed lips of fake breasts, I could just vomit. Plastic surgery faces are everywhere, and I'm not talking the standard nose job that many a teenaged girl gets before graduating high school. I'm talking distorted eyes, puffed up lips, porcelein veneers. Is it supposed to look good? Because it doesn't to me.

Am I supposed to be embarrassed to go on the beach without a six-pack or with a little jiggle on my rear? Aren't I a woman? Aren't I meant to bear children and have hips and a belly? I am not a personal trainer. I am not a super-model. I am just a normal woman, who doesn't want to starve myself so that I am looked at with admiration by my fellow beach-goers. All this nipping/tucking competition is just a way for the rest of the world to feel better about themselves. Excuse, the rest of the FEMALE world.

I just don't get why women will put themselves through so much to look a certain way, all so that men will look at them. They can deny it, and say that attracting men has nothing to do with their desire for double Ds, but I disagree. The big boobs, the big lips, the tongue rings - - it all says SEX!!! I will give you a great blow-job!!! Just look at these tits! Look at this mouth! It is completely unnatural, yet you see so many men with those types of women on their elbows. Thank goodness I live in New York is all I have to say. Los Angeles is not the place for me. I see enough of LA all over the movies and on television to know that I am rooting for the normal girl. Girls like me who look a-ok in a bikini just the way I am, and who could have an interesting conversation with you (because I can actually move my mouth!)

The Mamas and The Papas

The check-out woman at the deli where I get my daily salad calls me Mommy. As in, "Will that be all, Mommy?", "Do you want bread with that, Mommy?" I find it a bit weird and cannot make eye contact with her. It just reminds me of sex. I wouldn't call anybody "Poppy" unless I wanted them to think I am coming onto them. Even if my hubby asks me to (and he has!) I can't do it with a straight face. There is something submissive and slutty about it. Hey, I can dirty talk with the best of them, but the whole Mommy/Poppy thing I feel like can only come out of the mouth of somebody who can also say "my baby daddy". I feel like that may sound a bit stereotypical (ok, a lot stereotypical), but let's face it. I'm a white girl from upstate new york. Me calling somebody Poppy, or responding non-chalantly to being called Mommy by the check-out girl is about as natural as me dancing the salsa.

Sometimes

Why is it that when people are being described in the media, for example in a human interest story on the news, or an article in People magazine, that the word "happily" always precedes "married". It creates this idea that these people run around, giddy with huge smiles on their faces, gazing into each other's eyes, whispering "I love yous". Most people are happy, some of the time.

I don't think that happiness is as easily achieved as it is made to sound. Now, people reading this will now interpret that to mean that I am NOT happily married. That is not what I am saying... sometimes I am happy, sometimes sad. But I am content in my marriage. Contentedness equates happiness, in my book, but just doesn't scream JOY! Like we are all running around with huge smiles on our faces and if you're not part of the "happily married" group, then you are a freak.

I just find the whole thing to be kind of funny. Who knows whether or not that couple described as such goes home and has huge screaming matches or whether the husband is cheating on the wife, or whether the wife is secretly a lesbian... we don't know. All we know is that they put on the "happily married" front and they are accepted in the world.

I would just appreciate it more if people would answer that question realistically: "Are you happily married?" "Yes, sometimes, I am." It takes so much pressure off to be continuously happy. Why doesn't anyone admit, "no, I am actually UNhappily married. I didn't want to get married in the first place, yet here I am with 4 kids and 2 car payments and a huge mortgage and a job I hate. No, I am not happily anything!" or "Well, I was happily married yesterday but today I am just so-so happily married... see, my hubby left the toilet seat up again, after I told him a million times to put it down so when I sat down, my tushie got soaked in freezing cold water and I'm still pissed at him about it." See that would make ME happy! Truth! Realism! Honesty! What a novel idea. Or else, just stop with that phrase and instead change it to "are you content in marriage?" Content to me is warm and cozy, like I'm snuggled up on the couch with my hubby, eating popcorn and watching CSI. That I like. That is me. Content. In love. Happy, sometimes.

The Anticipation is Gift Enough

I love the holidays. I put our tree up yesterday and will just revel in the warm glow of it every night from now until Christmas. I dusted off the menorah and placed it in the windowsill. I hung the stockings and filled up a bowl with crackable nuts. I started baking my holiday cookies which I will dole out to our friends. I started writing out our holiday cards. Already wrapped gifts have been placed underneath the tree on the tree skirt that my mother made. I am ready.

For what, exactly. Sure, I love getting and giving gifts. But it was definitely more exciting being a kid and waking up to see a tree that was bare the night before now completely overshadowing piles and piles of presents, the cookies we left for Santa gone and a note in their place. Even after all gifts were opened and all that was left was paper and ribbon ready to get sucked up in the vacuum, we still had all these new toys to play with. Now, as an adult, I just like the anticipation. The leading up to it. Christmas is a bit of a let-down, to be honest. Because then it's over. No more looking forward to it. Dinner is nice, family is nice, but the aftermath is not. The tree somehow loses it's charm on December 26th.

But back to the presents. I'd still like toys, though, instead of sweaters. Grown-up toys. A new cell phone. An iPod. Something that I can spend hours programming and customizing to be mine. But I'll take the next three weeks of baking and planning and shopping and watching A Christmas Story again and again over gifts any day.