Happy Canvent, everyone! I hope you all enjoying celebrating this special time of year.
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What, you don't know what Canvent is? I'm shocked. This holiday deserves a place in history along with Ludachristmas and Festivus.
Let me tell you a story of the origin of Canvent: Once upon a time, there was a coworker with a very odd mother-in-law. This mother-in-law thought it would be funny to bring a box of canned goods to her future daughter's bridal shower. Yes, a box of canned goods. With the labels ripped off. No other gift. No explanations or game to go along with it---the mother-in-law just laughed and said that it was a common practice.
Nothing says "welcome to the family" like a box of a cans without labels.
So what's a girl to do with a large box of unlabeled canned goods? You can't donate them. You don't really want to eat them...so they sat in her garage until she made a mistake of telling her coworkers about it.
And thus Canvent was created. Every day from now until Christmas, our office will open up one can. Bets will be placed on what it contains. If it's not something too disgusting, we may even eat it.
The winner of Canvent gets absolutely nothing (except the warm, fuzzy feeling of being right when everyone else is wrong--and really, who doesn't love that?) And the winner of the first day of Canvent is....
It's a gift. And a curse.
Insert pun about manwich and my knowledge of it here.
Happy Canvent, y'all. Maybe Canvent is an elaborate metaphor for how each of us, stripped of our labels, contain wildly different things on the inside. Or maybe it's just a good excuse to be thankful that no matter what, your mother-in-law has never given you the gift of unlabeled cans.
It took me several years to embrace the pointed-toe on heels. I made fun of them (they look like witch shoes!) until they became so prevalent that I broke down and bought a few pairs, a couple of years after they went out of style. Same with the skinny jean which I looked decent in until I had Mo-mo and failed to lose those cough cough 20 cough cough extra pounds.
My sense of style used to run towards flip-flops, jeans, and graphic tees. Right before I started graduate school, I had a serious epiphany. I realized that I needed to grow up and quit dressing like a teenager. So now I wear solid colored shirts, jeans, and flip-flops! I HAVE MATURED! (hahahahaha no. Now I just look boring.)
I like to think that I have good fashion sense but everyone thinks that. Even the poor people on What Not To Wear think they have fashion sense. But it's a fringed jean-jacket with puffy paint! It can never go out of style! That's totally untrue unless the puffy paint is black because black never goes out of style. It's classic.
If I have to be perfectly honest with myself, I don't have great fashion sense. I love tacky. I'm immediately drawn to things like brightly-colored cowboy boots (I have a pair in red and lavender), paisley in turquoise and orange combination, and shiny things. I choose my clothing with the same forethought and planning as a raccoon with ADD.
I'm prettyyyyyyyyyy!
One of the goofier reasons that I am looking forward to going back to work is for the clothes. I can rock a suit. I look awesome in suits. They make me feel powerful, as if I'm going to make a lackey fetch me a latte and then I'll fire some people. I've tried to recapture those feelings recently but it hasn't turned out to well.
(Note to self: Batman does not like being referred to as a lackey. Nor do the cats respond when I tell them that they are fired.)
Most recent fashion purchase I've been pondering is Spanx. It's not a girdle, it's a slimmer! (i.e. it's a spandex girdle). I'm kind of afraid that I'd wear one and everyone would tell me how good I looked and then I'd have to wear one at all times or everyone would think that I just was gaining weight.
I was looking at them at Dillard's and apparently now one set of Spanx isn't enough, you need to layer them for maximum fat-suckage. So you double or even triple layer your Spanx. I fear that this trend will continue until everyone is wearing 15 or so layers of Spanx under their clothes and their belly flab has migrated up to their neck and it'll look like they have a grotesque turkey gizzard. Don't laugh, it's going to happen. After all, they even have Spanx for men now (aka a "mirdle").
So how about it, ladies? Do you love your Spanx? (ew, that sounds dirty.) Feel free to weigh in with a comment. Men, would you ever wear man-Spanx?
Today Mo-mo and I went to the waterpark. We sat in the shallow baby area, playing with her rubber ducky.
A seven year old girl started staring at us and inching closer and closer. Eventually she was sitting right next to us. She kept staring intently at me until she burst out with, "You look like my brother's girlfriend's friend's violin teacher!"
Thanks?
Later, when Mo-mo and I were tubing through the lazy river, she passed us in an inner-tube and cackled in a very good evil villain voice, "SO WE MEET AGAIN!"
I almost stole her and took her home with me just to hear what she'd say next, but I figured Batman wouldn't approve.
Batman and I have finished our degrees and we are moving from southern Illinois to St. Louis.
Exciting, right? Batman is done with law school and I'm finished earning my master's in public administration. We're ready to start our adult life, start paying off some debt, and maybe even thinking about owning a house.....right?
Hahahahahahahaha. No.
Neither of us have jobs. Batman at least has an excuse, as it is very difficult to get hired until he passes the bar exam. We're living in my parents basement indefinitely. The plus side is that my parents are very nice people and we'll be saving quite a bit of money. We've lived with them before for a summer (two summers actually) between internships and moving.
The downside is that no matter what, it's still living with my parents as an adult. I feel like a bad stereotype: playing World of Warcraft in my parents' basement, unemployed, eating the snacks my stepmom provides.
Have I mentioned that I turn into a sloth when I live with my folks? They a) believe in eating ridiculous amounts great food and b) keep the house quite cold. It makes me want to hibernate.
So here's my plan:
1) Apply for jobs. Duh.
2) If I do not get a job by the time that Batman is finished with his bar review class in early July, I will start doing temp work. I have mad data-entry skills.
3) Try not to go insane. You know, without my own space or my own kitchen or all of my books.
4) Do some cool things with Mo-mo. I'm going to be living in a bonafide city...I intend to take advantage of it.
5) Do some projects. I have a list. I always do. I'll share them with you all as I work on them.
2) Maybe Batman could enter! He's pretty creative.
3) Batman can't enter. He's in the midst of law school finals and there is no way he'd feel up to writing it.
4) Maybe I'll ghost write for him!
write write write write write write
5) Awwwwww crap. I can't enter this. Batman is going to be a lawyer and he could be disbarred for this sort of thing. grumble grumble responsibility grumble being a grown-up grumble grumble
Would you like to read my columns written in the persona of my husband? Sure you do. I actually used a lot of his own commentary and ideas to create them. I wrote three columns but the third one was kind of lame so I'm ripping it up and eating it to destroy all the evidence of its existence.
The Exorcism of Mo-mo Grace
There comes a point in every man’s life where he becomes convinced that his daughter is possessed.
For me, the first time was when my daughter, Mo-Mo, was six weeks old. She took her normal bottle of milk and kept fussing as if she were still hungry. As she was finishing her second bottle, she burped and transformed from my sweet, sleepy baby into a projectile-puking banshee. I think her head must have spun completely around. She managed to shoot milk in a 3-foot radius around her.
It was epic, as in steam-clean-the-carpet-afterwards epic. It was also over quickly, leaving only the memory and the faint smell of old milk.
We are currently battling the Teething Demon. If it were up to me, she would go through life with the four teeth she already has. My easygoing little girl has turned into a fussy drool-monster. We combat this phase with teething rings, baby Tylenol, and wet washcloths—we have not yet had to call in an old priest and a young priest.
As I look ahead, I know that there will be times when I no longer recognize my baby girl. When she hits her terrible twos and learns to word “no.” When she no longer thinks that balancing things on my head is the height of humor (trust me, this bit is wildly popular with the six months through two years old demographic). When she fearlessly walks away from me and into the classroom for the first time.
I don’t even want to think about the dreaded Puberty Demon. During the entire period from age thirteen to eighteen, somehow I will transform into the meanest and least cool person in the world. There will be fights about curfew, clothing, make-up, and dare I say? Fights about boys. I get a headache by just typing the words.
Tylenol and toys are no match against this formidable beastie called Puberty. There is no known cure for this affliction except for time—and even then, they can never become a little girl again.
In comparison, this Teething Demon doesn’t sound half bad.
Sharp Edges
It’s amazing how fast your world can change. Yesterday our house was cozy, comfortable and inviting. Today it’s a death trap, filled with sharp edges, choking hazards, and dangerously unstable furniture.
What has changed since yesterday? My daughter has begun to walk.
I suppose “walk” is a bit of an exaggeration. She pulled herself up to standing position. But I can already see the determined look in her eyes as she reaches forward for things just out of her reach: the remote control, a can of soda.
It doesn’t help that my wife reads all of the newspaper articles about freak accidents. She’s normally a level-headed person but this whole mommy thing brings out a streak of paranoia. I admit it, I’m effected too: I’d like nothing more than to wrap either my daughter or our entire house in bubble wrap.
For example, take the rocking chair and ottoman that we purchased before Mo-mo was born. Before, it was where we rocked her to sleep, read her stories, sang her lullabies, and calmed her when she was crying. Now it’s a gliding smasher of tiny fingers, an unstable surface to make her fall.
We’ve done minimal child-proofing so far, instead choosing create a baby-friendly zone in the middle of our living room. Of course, Mo-mo would much rather play with the rocking chair, pull on my X-box cables, play drums on the trashcan, and generally touch with every single thing in our house that is either dangerous or unsanitary. I follow her around in the perpetual state of heart failure, telling her “no” and redirecting her to less scary but less interesting objects.
Standing up by herself is a small step in her development. It will lead to more small steps, then big steps, then running. And as much as I wish I could, I can’t cushion the entire world for her. I won’t be there to catch her every time she falls.
Today, holding onto the coffee table. Tomorrow, she’ll conquer the world. Somehow we’ll both survive.
