I shaved my legs tonight. That might not seem blog-worthy to most of you, but you hadn't seen my legs. I can't recall the last time I did a real satisfying job of shaving my legs- perhaps sometime in early autumn when it was still warm enough to wear capris.
After the first swipe, I almost put the razor aside and got out the clippers. Really, I think I could have gotten it done faster that way. So, now I am smooth-legged with a few nicks here and there. After finishing with some nice body butter, I feel and smell fantastic.
Having newly shaved legs is kind of like getting a salon haircut. You leave feeling lighter and not able to stop running your fingers through the length. With shaving, you just want to run your hands up and down your smooth calves and admire the fact that you have ankles instead of cankles today. Is that just me?
I feel perhaps I am over sharing, so I will leave it at that.
I’m starting to rethink the pool pass I bought at the beginning of the summer. I haven’t had many opportunities to go, but this weekend I took the girls and our one adopted daughter (Mo’s bestest friend) to the pool to keep cool off after a very hot day. By the end of our time there I had a headache, my neck was sore and I had experienced more than my fair share of embarrassment. If I try to reflect on it honestly, I would have to admit the embarrassment was probably more in my own head, but at the time I was sure several, if not all, the people poolside were sharing a joke at my expense.
Some background for those of you who have not met me, or do not know me well – I have a large chest. Not to say my breasts are the largest anyone has ever seen. I saw that one women on E! who had plastic surgery to ensure she had something like a ZZZ cup size. Mine aren’t that big. I would like to say proportionally they are very large, but the truth is, they are just large. There is no way to hide it. I think I may have tried to wrap them with an ace bandage once in high school to fit into something better, but that is just too much work for every day.
Back to how my large chest has anything to do with the pool. Let’s start with the headache and sore neck. My swimsuit has a halter top. Whoever designed halter top swimwear for large busted women should have to wear one with the cups stuffed with grapefruit or honeydews for an hour or two. Holding up that much breast is a lot of work and puts a lot of strain on your neck. Part of that has to do with having the straps tied as tight as possible to avoid any wardrobe malfunctions. So my neck was getting sore, leading to a bit of a headache before any of the fun began.
We get to the pool and it doesn’t take long for my chest to weigh me down. The natural answer is to get in the water, where their buoyancy will take some of strain off my neck. After doing some laps and watching the girls do underwater somersaults, my oldest daughter asks me to go down the water slides with her. I said yes against my better judgment.
There are two slides at our public pool – one that requires a tube (single or double) and one that is a body slide. We went down the body slide first. I wear glasses and take prescription sunglasses to the pool so I can see things like small children, my children and cute lifeguards. It was inevitable I would lose these going down the slide, so I took them off and held them in my hand while I stood in line. I did not see my daughter ahead of me use her hands to swing herself down into the jetted water to get her speed up. I simply sat down and pushed on either side of the tube. This worked fine for the first straight away and one bend, then disaster struck. Halfway down the slide I started to slow down. A lot. I will pause here to allow you to visualize. At one point, I was scooting on my butt until I figured out if I lay all the way down with straight legs (toes pointed) I would make my way to the bottom a bit faster. The trip was painfully slow. The kid at the top waiting for the slide to clear was probably whining at this point. When I got to the pool I merely slipped in, landing on my feet, while everyone else kind of jets out of the thing.
Slide #2: By this time I was slide shy. I have gone down the tubing slide before with little incident. It can be a lot of fun. The kids like me to sit in back because my weight propels us at a very fast speed and makes for an interesting landing. This time the landing was unique. The two-person tubes look like figure eights with a set of handles on either side of the hole for the front and back rider. As mentioned, I sit in the back. I put my butt in the hole, legs on top of either side and held on. When we splashed into the pool below, water rushed all around us, and my butt would not come out of the hole. I panicked a bit and, in the process of trying to extricate myself, I kicked Maggie in the head. She would not stop reminding me of it all evening long.
After the disaster on the slides, I decided it was best to sit and read my book under a big umbrella far away from other people. It was an unforgettable adventure. I’m not sure how much more use my pool pass or my bathing suit will get this season.
Some background for those of you who have not met me, or do not know me well – I have a large chest. Not to say my breasts are the largest anyone has ever seen. I saw that one women on E! who had plastic surgery to ensure she had something like a ZZZ cup size. Mine aren’t that big. I would like to say proportionally they are very large, but the truth is, they are just large. There is no way to hide it. I think I may have tried to wrap them with an ace bandage once in high school to fit into something better, but that is just too much work for every day.
Back to how my large chest has anything to do with the pool. Let’s start with the headache and sore neck. My swimsuit has a halter top. Whoever designed halter top swimwear for large busted women should have to wear one with the cups stuffed with grapefruit or honeydews for an hour or two. Holding up that much breast is a lot of work and puts a lot of strain on your neck. Part of that has to do with having the straps tied as tight as possible to avoid any wardrobe malfunctions. So my neck was getting sore, leading to a bit of a headache before any of the fun began.
We get to the pool and it doesn’t take long for my chest to weigh me down. The natural answer is to get in the water, where their buoyancy will take some of strain off my neck. After doing some laps and watching the girls do underwater somersaults, my oldest daughter asks me to go down the water slides with her. I said yes against my better judgment.
There are two slides at our public pool – one that requires a tube (single or double) and one that is a body slide. We went down the body slide first. I wear glasses and take prescription sunglasses to the pool so I can see things like small children, my children and cute lifeguards. It was inevitable I would lose these going down the slide, so I took them off and held them in my hand while I stood in line. I did not see my daughter ahead of me use her hands to swing herself down into the jetted water to get her speed up. I simply sat down and pushed on either side of the tube. This worked fine for the first straight away and one bend, then disaster struck. Halfway down the slide I started to slow down. A lot. I will pause here to allow you to visualize. At one point, I was scooting on my butt until I figured out if I lay all the way down with straight legs (toes pointed) I would make my way to the bottom a bit faster. The trip was painfully slow. The kid at the top waiting for the slide to clear was probably whining at this point. When I got to the pool I merely slipped in, landing on my feet, while everyone else kind of jets out of the thing.
Slide #2: By this time I was slide shy. I have gone down the tubing slide before with little incident. It can be a lot of fun. The kids like me to sit in back because my weight propels us at a very fast speed and makes for an interesting landing. This time the landing was unique. The two-person tubes look like figure eights with a set of handles on either side of the hole for the front and back rider. As mentioned, I sit in the back. I put my butt in the hole, legs on top of either side and held on. When we splashed into the pool below, water rushed all around us, and my butt would not come out of the hole. I panicked a bit and, in the process of trying to extricate myself, I kicked Maggie in the head. She would not stop reminding me of it all evening long.
After the disaster on the slides, I decided it was best to sit and read my book under a big umbrella far away from other people. It was an unforgettable adventure. I’m not sure how much more use my pool pass or my bathing suit will get this season.
I realized this week how easy it is to get so used to the way we do things that deviating from that, even necessarily, can seem impossible. I was reminded of this by my youngest daughter. Yesterday was her day to clean the kitchen. The kids are on summer break for a few more months and we have given them more and more responsibility as the summer has progressed. Moira was in charge of unloading and loading the dishwasher and doing general cleaning of the entire kitchen. I must add here that Jon did tell them if they were in charge of the kitchen for the day, they got to choose what to watch on TV. This may have contributed to Moira's fast thinking during her chores.
We have almost always had a dishwasher. There were a few years where we didn't and, to be honest, we ate mostly on paper plates. We buy the detergent that comes in a compressed tablet. Usually the kind with the red ball in the middle. I have no idea what the red ball is supposed to do, but if it's there, then it must be special, right? In any case, it's easy to add soap to the dishwasher -- just unwrap the little package and throw it in. We have been out of soap tablets for a few days, and we are using powdered dishwashing detergent in a bright green box -- something I think my sister-in-law left when she moved into a place with no dishwasher. The box is hard to miss and it sits right on top of the dishwasher, a little below eye level on an 11-year-old.
It is so ingrained in Mo that you use the little tablets, that it didn't occur to her there was any other way to run the dishwasher. She didn't want to leave it undone because then she wouldn't be able to watch TV. So... you may have guessed by now that she used liquid dish soap. When I first got home from work, it wasn't apparent what had happened. I opened the dishwasher to get something and noticed bubbles on the bottom. Not a lot. I first thought the dishwasher had not finished it's cycle (it happens sometimes when it is opened prematurely). I started a rinse cycle and not two minutes later bubbles were pouring out of the bottom of the dishwasher and onto the floor. The inside filled with bubbles and after four rinse cycles, it was still a little soapy.
Moira never even saw the box that said "Dishwasher Detergent" in silver. Her mind went directly to the liquid soap, because it seemed the quickest way to get something she wanted -- what she saw as the only option.
I feel like this sometimes. The kids start school again soon and I have to work. I won't be there to see them off to school ( I leave for work shortly after they get up). This is the first year I won't be able to do this. I wouldn't be so upset about it, but Jon won't be there either. I know they are growing up and able to do it themselves, but I am so used to doing it this way, that it seems impossible to do it any other way. I could take a shortcut and arrive late at work, but that isn't really an option. The answer is right in front of my face, but I am so unused to this scenario that I am blind to it.
I need to let them do it for themselves.
Just typing that sentence hurts. All I can think is why did I have to stop working from home? If I hadn't needed to get out of the house so badly I could be there for them. It seems so silly. They are the reason I got a job outside the house, yet this job is the reason I can't be there for them. Crazy how that works, huh? I guess we all reach for the liquid detergent every once in a while.
We have almost always had a dishwasher. There were a few years where we didn't and, to be honest, we ate mostly on paper plates. We buy the detergent that comes in a compressed tablet. Usually the kind with the red ball in the middle. I have no idea what the red ball is supposed to do, but if it's there, then it must be special, right? In any case, it's easy to add soap to the dishwasher -- just unwrap the little package and throw it in. We have been out of soap tablets for a few days, and we are using powdered dishwashing detergent in a bright green box -- something I think my sister-in-law left when she moved into a place with no dishwasher. The box is hard to miss and it sits right on top of the dishwasher, a little below eye level on an 11-year-old.
It is so ingrained in Mo that you use the little tablets, that it didn't occur to her there was any other way to run the dishwasher. She didn't want to leave it undone because then she wouldn't be able to watch TV. So... you may have guessed by now that she used liquid dish soap. When I first got home from work, it wasn't apparent what had happened. I opened the dishwasher to get something and noticed bubbles on the bottom. Not a lot. I first thought the dishwasher had not finished it's cycle (it happens sometimes when it is opened prematurely). I started a rinse cycle and not two minutes later bubbles were pouring out of the bottom of the dishwasher and onto the floor. The inside filled with bubbles and after four rinse cycles, it was still a little soapy.
Moira never even saw the box that said "Dishwasher Detergent" in silver. Her mind went directly to the liquid soap, because it seemed the quickest way to get something she wanted -- what she saw as the only option.
I feel like this sometimes. The kids start school again soon and I have to work. I won't be there to see them off to school ( I leave for work shortly after they get up). This is the first year I won't be able to do this. I wouldn't be so upset about it, but Jon won't be there either. I know they are growing up and able to do it themselves, but I am so used to doing it this way, that it seems impossible to do it any other way. I could take a shortcut and arrive late at work, but that isn't really an option. The answer is right in front of my face, but I am so unused to this scenario that I am blind to it.
I need to let them do it for themselves.
Just typing that sentence hurts. All I can think is why did I have to stop working from home? If I hadn't needed to get out of the house so badly I could be there for them. It seems so silly. They are the reason I got a job outside the house, yet this job is the reason I can't be there for them. Crazy how that works, huh? I guess we all reach for the liquid detergent every once in a while.
The weather has been beautiful here and after going to the local farmer's market I decided to fry some doughnuts. Not the most logical step after returning from seeing stalls and stalls of fresh produce, but it works for me. The doughnuts turned out delightful if I do say so myself. You can find the recipe at my recipe blog.
I went out and took a few pictures the other day so I could show everyone our house, our neighbor's peonies (that grow into our yard so they are technically mine too) and the awesome sign our neighbor has on his side gate.
I always get a little nostalgic this time of year. It's the last week of school for the kids. I am excited to have more time to spend with them, but it also means they will move up a grade next year and are getting older. It means I am getting older. It means they are less likely to allow me to hug them in public, clean the dirt from their faces with my spit, skip down the sidewalk with me when people are around and other getting older type of things.
I am going to have to make the most of what is left of the younger kid phase of their lives and do things that in a year or two will completely embarrass them. I vow to spend the summer: singing Lady Gaga at stoplights with the windows down when they are in the car, bowling gutter balls and still cheering for myself, pulling their pants up so their butt crack doesn't show, telling them I love them in front of their friends and making them show me their wet toothbrushes as proof they brushed their teeth.
This is going to be a fun summer.
I am going to have to make the most of what is left of the younger kid phase of their lives and do things that in a year or two will completely embarrass them. I vow to spend the summer: singing Lady Gaga at stoplights with the windows down when they are in the car, bowling gutter balls and still cheering for myself, pulling their pants up so their butt crack doesn't show, telling them I love them in front of their friends and making them show me their wet toothbrushes as proof they brushed their teeth.
This is going to be a fun summer.
Okay, so it's not the classics, but this reading challenge from Book Chick City is going to be a blast. I love smutty romance books during the summer, so this is perfect for me.
If you love to read, even if you aren't a fan of romances, you should still join this challenge. I'm going to have the best book reviews ever!!!!
Here's a challenge going out to my friend Maxine — I know you want to do this in your heart of hearts. You don't have to tell anyone but me. I swear I won't tell a soul you are reading books that make you blush!!!!!
On one of our first sunny days in a long time we all went down to the park and took some pictures, soaked up some sunshine and had some fun.
