I love Barbara Streisand.  There, I said it.  I love her movies and I love it when she does television appearances.  There’s something about her that just makes her to cute and endearing.  When I was in my last couple weeks of pregnancy with Lukas, I stayed in bed a lot because it was hot outside, the bedroom was the only room with an air conditioner, and I was HUGE and pregnant and didn’t like to move much.  Well as it happened, “The Way We Were” came on television during that time, and I watched it for the first time.  You want to talk about a movie completely messing with my pregnancy hormones, that movie hit it just right!  I cried for days after watching that movie. I usually try to stay away from chick flicks….they bother me.  But I indulge in them every now and then, but I never thought that I would be a person to relish the thought of watching a Streisand movie.  I haven’t seen all of them.  I’ve seen “A Star is Born”, “The Way We Were” and “The Mirror Has Two Faces” as well as “Meet the Fockers” even though it isn’t a chick flick, but she was perfect in that movie.  I love these movies and watch them whenever they are on.  So yeah, Miss I’m-Not-A-Weepy-Girl loves Babs.  So shoot me.

My phobia with spiders is getting increasingly worse.  Earlier this week, I was sitting in the family room with Lukas.  I had just opened a can of soda and had kept it in my hand the entire time it was open (that detail is important).  I noticed a small spider on the wall.  I sat looking at it for a minute, feeling the chills making their way down my spine, feeling my skin start to prickle and sweat at the same time.  The thought of that spider getting on either Lukas or myself made my bowels cramp so I got up, rolled up a magazine and killed the beast.  I then washed my hands with scalding water and resumed my position on the sofa.  I picked up my soda (which I had set down about 10 feet away from the murder of the arachnid) and put it to my lips.  I froze before I could take a sip.  “What if a spider is in here?  Or worse, what if there are spider bits in here?”  My common sense tried explaining to my fevered brain that there was no spider in there nor were there spider bits in there.  It was only soda.  I tried to calm myself and put the can again to my lips.  I forced myself to take a small sip and it took me at least 2 minutes to force myself to swallow it.  I sat for another half hour trying to talk myself into taking another sip when I finally gave up and dumped out the contents and got myself a glass of water so that at least I could see if there were spider bits contained inside.

When Lukas is napping sometimes I like to sit in front of a mirror and lip sync to my favorite music.  Sometimes this consists of air guitar and head banging.  Sometimes it consists of dramatic hand gestures and a long face.  I totally get into it and pretend like I’m a music star.

Yesterday when I was making Lukas his breakfast, I shoved 8 Oreos in my mouth.  They all fit.

I’ve never been to a dentist before.  With all of the soda that I drink, I dread when that first time actually comes.

When I was in grade school, my babysitter’s daughter dared me to say something really mean and nasty to another girl on the bus.  She said it would be funny.  When I said it, the girl got a really sad look on her face and moved to the back of the bus.  I cried because I felt so bad and I didn’t talk to my babysitter’s daughter for a whole week.

Most of my underwear has holes.

I daydream a lot.  I always have.  I think I might be a bit of an escapist.

I sometimes feel a little bad that Lukas looks nothing like me.

If Jessie goes a day or two without showing me any affection, I freeze up and turn resentful of him.  It takes the poor guy almost a week of constant work to thaw me out.

Now you know more of me that you need to.

I have a tendency to be vulgar.  I have a tendency to laugh at completely inappropriate things.  But who says what is vulgar?  Who says what is and is not appropriate?  Why is my refusal to turn my nose up at genuinely funny things called “immature” by some?

You know, I can appreciate that many people just may not share my sense of humor.  However, I get the impression from some people that there is a hesitancy to just let loose and laugh for fear of looking like a jackass…or immature…or unrefined.  POPPYCOCK!

The real shame of all of this is that I get this impression mostly from women.  This isn’t a recent observation either.  I guess I started noticing it once we all started hitting puberty.  We all wanted to be mature and sophisticated women in our training bras and baby faces.  I bought into it.  Thankfully, I started noticing how boring it was being like that and removed the stick from my butt.

I fell onto the stick again, though. Started hanging out with some women who thought it terribly tasteless to laugh at funny stuff.  I bought into it again.  I think that as social creatures, we are sometimes torn between wanting to be ourselves and wanting to conform to what society tells us we should be.  Therefore, we are always metaphorically perched over a gigantic stick that is always either dangerously close to anal insertion or a full three inches inside the rectum.  Thankfully, I’m most comfortable on the fringe and don’t mind being weird.  So I’m able to breathe comfortably without having that stick on my dark underside.

I get those sideways glances (the ones that ask without words what the hell is wrong with me), but more importantly, I make people laugh at things that they thought they shouldn’t laugh at.  They shock themselves.  I love being able to do that because I love it when I shock myself.  Life is so short, but it is also so full of things outside of our own tiny minds.  We have to be open to as much as possible.  We’re students of life for as long as we live it.  That’s why I get annoyed when people tell me that they are old and set in their ways.  That’s not only ridiculous, but it’s trite.  Once you close yourself off to new things and learning new things about yourself and about life, you’re dead.  You may still be breathing and walking around, but you’re basically letting younger generations think that it is okay to be stubborn and to refuse to admit to any fault.  It ain’t cool, baby.

I don’t always like all of the surprises that I see.  By being open, I learn that I’m wrong A LOT.  I’m someone who, if they had degrees for smart-assery, I would have a quadruple Ph.D.  It’s not always easy for me to learn that I’m really an idiot asshole who knows precisely dick about life in the larger scheme of things.  But, with the good comes the bad and I’m fine with that.  It keeps me grounded to have those little bonks upside the head.  There’s nothing wrong with finding out you’re only a flawed human after all.

And that’s exactly why I like to laugh at everything.  At myself, at my failures, at my mistakes, and at basically everything else.  I’m still learning, and I will continue to learn until I’m dead.  And you know what?  I’ll still be laughing at everything by then too.  If I live to a ripe old age, I’ll be the lady that all the kids joke about being senile because I sit on my porch and laugh hysterically every time one of the little jerks falls off their bike.

Yesterday I got a phone call from a “water specialty” place.  They said that they were offering a promotional offer and that if I let a man come into my home and test my water and then sit through a 45 minute “evaluation” we could then receive a $100 grocery card.  Hey, We can definitely use a $100 grocery card, so against my better judgment, I said yes.  So tonight an older gentleman came into my home, gave Jessie what turned out to be a high pressure sales pitch (which Jessie fell for…he always falls for it.  He’d buy a $100 bottle of pills if someone told him it would make his shit smell like potpourri).  When Jessie informed the gentleman (who had ignored me through the entire schpeel because *gasp* I’m only a woman and how could I possibly make any sort of important decision) that he didn’t handle the finances and that I was the person who needed to be hearing all of the information.  The gentleman retold me everything and when I recognized it as a sales pitch even though he swore up and down that he wasn’t a salesman, I informed him that I was not going to be signing anything tonight and that with having just bought a new house, I wasn’t comfortable enough yet with my budget to make a decision that would cost us an additional $100 a month.

The old bastard became condescending with me.  Like in a sexist way.  Like in a way where I’m tempted to write to this company and inform them of the sexist bastard that they are sending out to sell their stuff.  “I guess you just don’t get it.”  He kept saying to me.  Ummm, excuse me?  You’ve been talking my ear off for over an hour…I GET IT.  I DON’T WANT WHAT YOU’RE SELLING.  He then called his boss and right in front of my explained to his boss that “the wife” wasn’t interested and that I was hard-headed and that he just assumed that he didn’t explain things to me so that I could understand them.

I got mad, but I kept my mouth shut.  I’m glad that I did.  I have a tendency to have prickish rants (as you all should know) and I just wanted this asshole out of my house.  Christian Bale and I should have lunch and compare prickish rants sometime.  I’m glad I shut up.  But I’m still thinking of contacting the company.

While the man was here, Jessie got a phone call on his cell.  He checked the caller I.D. and told me that it was a guy who had called him twice before today.  The guy had apparently mumbled a lot and Jessie hung up on him.  Jessie left the room, spoke for a minute or two, came back into the room crimson-faced and told me he’d explain after the sexist old fart left.  This is the conversation that Jessie had:

Jessie: “Hello?”

Caller:  *mumble*

Jessie:  “Excuse me?”

Caller:  *mumble*

Jessie:  “Excuse me?”

Caller:  “Did you get sucked off yet?”

Jessie:  “WHO THE FUCK IS THIS?!?!?”

Caller:  “You gave me your number over instant messenger.”

Jessie:  “No I did not!”

Caller:  “Yes you did.”

Jessie:  “No I did not!”

Caller:  “Yes you did.”

Jessie:  “NO I DID NOT!”

Caller:  *click*

Now I have an alternate theory as to how this guy got Jessie’s number.  Sure, he could have gotten it off of IM, but I’m betting that he saw it written on a men’s room bathroom stall.  You know, since the gay community considers Jessie such a hot piece of ass and all.