not that you asked...

Have I no boundaries?

*Comments are now CLOSED! Winner has been chosen and will be announced on Monday!*

We went to a local festival on Monday. It was your usual festival: vendor booths, high school dance troupes, carnival rides, funnel cakes, and me, SWEATING THROUGH MY PANTS.

OMG you guys, I mean, yes, it was hot out, and there was no breeze and it was muggy and humid and people were packed into the carnival area where Asher wanted to ride some rides, but there is really no excuse for the fact that the back of my pants looked like I'd sat directly in a puddle. I am not talking about a little spot or two. I am talking a wet spot roughly the size of, oh, say, a TOILET SEAT. When I started suspecting what was happening, I asked Dave to take a look and he busted out laughing and said something very supportive like, “DUDE, that is REALLY BAD,” and then I couldn't stop looking at the backs of OTHER people's pants to see if anyone else was maybe having a similar situation but it turns out that NO ONE WAS, not even people who were wearing jeans; not even people who were GROSSLY OVERWEIGHT. Just me! I was the only one wandering around with overzealous under-butt sweat glands! I suppose it didn't help that I was wearing khaki-colored capri pants made out of this ridiculously thin material that shows even the tiniest hint of moisture. But that fact was only comforting to ME, the only person who knew that because she had access to the tag in the back of the pants. It's not like I could walk up to people and explain that this sweat situation looked especially bad because of the cotton/polyester blend I was wearing and not because I'm a sweaty sweaty HOG of a person. I swear! I'm JUST LIKE YOU! I don't usually DO THIS!

As we were leaving, we walked by a news crew. I kept on walking with my head down, certain they were filming my backside so they could air it later during a story about the oppressive heat with the caption, “Local Woman Sweats Aggressively Through Pants.” And then I turned around to find my husband attempting to photograph my unfortunate situation with his iPhone and I was NOT AMUSED.

I had to get that out of the way before I get to the next thing on my list, which is that I have acquired a revolutionary product that I cannot believe never existed before now and simultaneously, that I cannot believe even exists at all. And what YOU will not believe is that my brother's mother-in-law bought it for me. I do not know if he is comfortable with that, but I don't plan on asking.

It's a device to help women pee standing up.

STANDING UP. I know! FRIGGIN INGENIOUS. Although, the product seems to have been designed with outdoorsy people in mind. Chances are slim that I'm going to need to pee while paddling a canoe or something. (I mean, if I am on a canoe? It is SUMMER and I can get in the water to pee. Who canoes in cold weather? Besides OUTDOORSY PEOPLE?) (Actually, that's not even true, because it takes me an hour to loosen up enough to pee in the ocean, so I cannot imagine the Performance Pressure I would be under if I had to climb out of a canoe and pee while possibly holding up the rest of the canoe party.) (Would only canoe as part of a canoe party; canoeing alone just sounds like a good way to get exhausted and lost.) But I have been in many many bathrooms where a product like this would have come in very useful! And not to mention certain OTHER COUNTRIES, specifically the ones where the norm is squatting over a big dirty hole in the ground. SHUDDER.

What does make me laugh is the web site. “The feminine urination device that lets you go anywhere.” And there's a photo of a girl taking a picture of the Taj Mahal and I'm inappropriately picturing her realizing she needs to go while she's on a guided tour and whipping out her pink peeing aid and letting it go up against a wall. And then she sighs happily. There should be a subtitle: “The female urination device that lets you go anywhere. NOT THAT WE ARE ADVOCATING THAT. For Pete's sake, do not urinate on the Taj Mahal.”

Anyway, so let's have a contest! I will send the winner a THREE-PACK of Go Girl disposable urination devices, to pee with or just to freak out your friends and family. All you have to do is leave a comment telling me the weirdest place you've ever peed or HAD to pee (the entire story is welcome, if you feel led). (I would have a hard time choosing between that dumpster in Buckhead and a train in Switzerland, where the bathroom was just a little room with a toilet that opened up DIRECTLY ONTO THE TRAIN TRACKS. All that fresh mountain air, whooshing right up onto my naked behind.) I'll randomly choose a winner on Saturday.

Wait, did someone ask for pictures of my kids?

 
 
 
 
 

I had to publish this now, because I have this New Post I'm working on that will BLOW YOUR MINDS

Back in my public transportation days, I would take an express bus from a parking lot close to my house to a Metro stop, where I'd take a train into the city. The express bus was usually a 15-minute journey, which was a good thing, since many mornings people were packed into them like sardines and most mornings I was late to the bus stop which made me one of the sardines who had to stand for the entire ride. The other good thing about the bus was that it was authorized to take the express lanes on the highway, so we rarely dealt with traffic or backups.

What would happen was the bus would get close to the little railroad crossing arm that separated the regular lanes from the express lanes and a sensor on the bus would alert the little arm that the bus was coming and then the arm would raise up and the bus would never have to slow down. I never second-guessed this technology. You can clearly see where this is going.

So one morning I'm standing in a packed bus, looking out the front window as best I can so I don't get motion sick and barf all over someone in a suit and an important-looking government badge, when I see that we're hurtling at top speed toward the little railroad crossing arm and the little railroad crossing arm is NOT GOING UP. And yet we're still moving! And the railroad arm is still down! Still down! STILL DOWN and the bus driver is clearly trusting that it is going to go up in time and then all of a sudden he realizes it isn't and he slams on the brakes and we go from 55 miles an hour to an ABSOLUTE STANDSTILL and no one but me seems to be aware this could even possibly happen because they've all got their noses buried in the Washington Post business section and so everyone standing in the aisle falls into a jumbled heap on the bus floor and briefcases are thumping into people's heads and elbows are jamming into people's ribs and FEET ARE STOMPING ON PEOPLE'S BACKS and the most awkward part is that after everyone stands back up, no one says anything. No one laughs, or cracks a joke, or swears at the bus driver for putting our lives in danger; even the bus driver HIMSELF doesn't say anything. No, we just stand there, silently, like the icy, soulless Washingtonians we are, and when I get to work everyone in the break room wants to know why I have footprints on my back. Oh, because I fell down in the bus and someone stepped on my back but I don't know who it was because no one helped me up and no one apologized either. No one apologized! AFTER STEPPING ON MY BACK.

Another time it was snowing when I got on in the morning and so it wasn't long before traffic was completely deadlocked, because this is Washington, DC, and even though every other winter we get a decent snowstorm, no one seems to remember anything about driving in it except that maybe they should PANIC and so I stood on that packed bus for MORE THAN AN HOUR, in the same spot, while we went nowhere. And ok, so don't get me wrong, I'm not the kind of person who expects men to give up their seats for a lady anymore (a pregnant woman or an elderly woman, however, YES PLEASE) but how about just giving other people (women AND men) a chance to sit down for a moment or two since you know they've been standing for a very long time? And I know, standing isn't usually that big of a deal (it's called working retail) but this was standing in a crowded area, where the most movement I could get was shuffling my feet a little; it's not like I could move around or stretch or UNLOCK MY KNEES. But everyone who was sitting kept their noses buried in their newspapers and books because it was the best way to pretend that others weren't suffering around them. So I stood there, getting angrier and angrier because DUDE, my LEGS HURT and I'm going to PASS OUT from the fatigue of being wedged between all these people and also the steamy steamy HEAT with the winter coat and the mittens and the hat and the wool scarf and then WHAT DO YOU KNOW: the man next to me says, “Would you like to sit down?” And I smiled at him and said, “Oh, no, I'm fine. Thank you, though.” And then I had no one to be angry at but myself, because suddenly it was my own damn fault if my back gave out. Lesson: I ANNOY EVEN MYSELF.

Then one afternoon I left the office a couple of minutes late, so I was booking it to catch the train when I tripped in front of six lanes of traffic and fell on a grate. A GRATE. Which would have been bad enough, what with the six lanes of traffic and all and the fact that I haven't tripped and fallen down at full speed since JUNIOR HIGH, but what made it infinitely worse was that this particular grate wasn't flat, it had raised notches on it, like this. My casual Friday jeans were torn open at the knees and the skin was hanging off the heels of my hands and I was bleeding and did I mention that skin was HANGING OFF MY HANDS? My knee wounds weren't too obvious, because my jeans were soaking up the blood (yum!) but I was about to get on a crowded train during Friday afternoon rush hour, which meant I was most likely not going to be able to get a seat. The alternative was going to have to be to hold onto the poles with my raw, bloody hands or plant my feet as wide apart as I could get them and attempt to maintain my balance by holding my arms out and swaying along with the train. In other words, I was going to have to be the person that all the normal people went home and told their significant others about later that night. And I worried about this, a lot, in the moments before the train arrived, and then when the train did arrive, it was like the nightmare came true. I stood, trying to hold myself upright by clutching the pole with my fingertips and, when I could manage it without looking like some kind of pervert, also by squeezing it in between my bloody knees. For FORTY MINUTES I did this. And when the train would stop? I would hold my hands up in the air, ELEVATING THEM, to stop the bleeding. And although I suspected that I was the lone Crazy Freak on the train, it wasn't completely obvious until an entire seat opened up right beside me and after I sat down – EVEN THOUGH THE TRAIN WAS STILL PACKED LIKE A SARDINE CAN – no one had the nerve to sit down beside me.

This is totally unrelated, but about a month after I had the incident with the grate and the bleeding and the social outcasting on public transportation thing, I went to the doctor for a sinus infection and after she wrote me a prescription for an antibiotic I said, “You know? I tripped and fell a few weeks ago, and my knee is still really sore. Would you look at it and tell me if I should get it x-rayed or anything?” AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE DOCTOR SAID? She said no, that I would need to call and get another appointment for someone to look at that. Which I know, is probably a stupid insurance coding thing or whatever, but OMG SERIOUSLY? All I wanted was for someone to look at it and tell me, hey, it's probably fine. Or, you know? Maybe you should have it looked at by a Knee Doctor or something. But she looked me RIGHT IN THE EYE and said no, make another appointment. Is that not the most RIDICULOUS thing you've ever heard? RIDICULOUS, especially when I sat in the waiting room for 40 minutes and then the exam room for another 30 and they want me to COME BACK and do it ALL OVER AGAIN? I decided I would come back if my leg fell off instead. AND THEN I WOULD SUE.

(My leg never fell off.)

(I would like to hear your public transportation stories, because I know yours will trigger more of my own memories. I don't hold onto memories well. As evidenced by the fact that I just watched an entire episode of My First Place on HGTV that I didn't realize I'd seen before until I was 27 minutes into it. THE SHOW IS ONLY A HALF-HOUR LONG.)

Riding the rails

We took Asher to ride Thomas the Tank Engine on Saturday.

Before I had kids, I could never have imagined that I would enjoy spending an entire day watching one of them immerse himself in something I've never found the tiniest INKLING of pleasure in. Oh, ok, so I actually used to get a lot of pleasure out of using a Metro Orange Line car as my own personal Nap Capsule, but that hardly falls into the same category as Asher's ongoing, all-consuming obsession with trains. While we're on the subject, I feel I should add that the Nap Capsule failed me more times than I can even begin to count; in the two years that I rode public transportation to work, I probably slept through my stop somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 times. Once I even continued sleeping while the train was about to be pulled out of the station and OUT OF SERVICE FOR THE NIGHT. There were announcements being made over the intercom and people scrambling past me to get off and THE LIGHTS WERE OFF and yet the only thing that woke me up was a little bitty Asian woman who saw me through the window, and who stopped and pounded on it with her little bitty fists while admonishing me loudly in a thick accent, “YOU WANT TO GO OUT OF SERVICE?”

Gah, I could do an entire post about riding public transportation. About the time I got to work with someone else's footprints on my back; about the time I rode home with bloodied hands and knees (it's the best way to get a seat to yourself, LET ME TELL YOU); about the time that guy tried to pick me up by asking me if I had the time while I was standing directly underneath an ENORMOUS digital clock. Let me know if you desire that post and I will gladly comply.

So anyway, there we are at Thomas the Train. The museum was beautiful and the weather was comfortable and Asher was just as interested in the real, actual trains displayed around the property as he was the ones with giant googly eyes and uptight British names and that made me happy. And it was supposed to be this magical experience getting to ride Thomas, and I know Asher had no idea, but I couldn't help but laugh as we lined up to board the train and saw that this was nothing more than a fake engine (a second engine would be doing the actual work) pulling commuter cars decorated with crepe paper streamers and pictures of cartoon trains. At approximately three miles an hour.

I could have RUN faster than old Thomas moved. Perhaps though, the speed at which we traveled was just to make it easy for us to take in all of the gorgeous scenery around us.

Like this trash heap!

And these old rusted train cars!

And this giant pile of rotting logs!

A barbed wire fence!

Some delightful graffiti!

OMG, HONESTLY. Thirty minutes of crawling along and staring out the window at Baltimore's Finest Neighborhoods. And this didn't occur to me when we bought the tickets, but once you're on the train and sitting in your seats? Your kid can't SEE Thomas anymore and therefore, your kid doesn't actually CARE anymore that you're even ON a train, and your kid wants OFF THE TRAIN and wants to see more LEGO TRAINS and you'll just have to hand over the entire bag of trail mix and watch him methodically pick out every chocolate chip and M&M just so he'll stay quiet and stop flailing about with boredom all over your lap.

The only other really amusing thing was that there was a display (albeit a mindbogglingly awesome display) at the event by an organization called the Washington, DC Metro Area LEGO Train Club. Basically, it's a group of people who love trains, and also LEGOs, and they get together and build unbelievably complicated and fantastic train displays. From LEGOs. I mean, the finished product was crazy amazing, and I can honestly tell you that I normally don't really care for LEGOs OR trains. But Dave and I were laughing about the marriage of two things I never would have thought could generate interest TOGETHER, you know? Like, how many people are really out there with an equal passion for small plastic blocks and model railroads?

Enough, apparently, to put together this:

Anyway, it was a good day, and even though someone threw the World's Saddest Slash Angriest Tantrum when we left, we decided to make the best of it and eat lunch at the Inner Harbor and after we ate and had walked around a bit, I popped Asher into the stroller and made him laugh by running after some pigeons but the fun ended when I stopped abruptly and accidentally threw him onto his face on the pavement in front of a big crowd of people and then we paid $17 to get out of the parking garage even though we'd only left the car there for 66 minutes. THE END.