The Results of the Lie Detector

I'm no master of suspense, so I'm just going to go ahead and tell you that the only statement from yesterday's post which is 100% true is #2.  I did flatten my vagina against a car window by mistake.  I take comfort in the fact that this all happened before my goods had been mutilated by child birth, so it couldn't have been that horrifying for the onlookers.  

As for the others...

#1 - I was never naked in front of a salesman.  Not a real one anyway.  

#3 - The hubs has in the past lit his farts on fire, (Hello, Classy!), but never have I asked to be taught.  It remains a fact that I cannot fart on command.  And to the commenter who said that she knows otherwise, I would point out that a fart is entirely different from a queef.

#4 - I never pooped on a delivery table.  Sorry for all who were hoping.  Although, I will admit that while my episiotomy was being stitched up after kid #1, there were some fart-type noises going on, but I won't describe them, because how many times can you use the word queef in one post without sounding trashy?  My guess is one.

#5 - This one actually could be 100% true.  I know I did announce the opening "thong", but I never had the guts to ask anyone if I'd uttered that other phrase aloud.  I remember thinking afterward that it was a strong possibility, but I chose to push it out of my mind.

#6 - I was, in fact voted most likely to become a White House intern by members of the staff at my high school.  I was voted Most Mischievous by my peers, (which I never understood because I only even skipped class one time and never pulled the fire alarm). I did not, however, volunteer on anyone's political campaign.  I'm not the "get involved" type.

So there ya have it!  And because I think the rules of this little game mandate that I tag three more bloggers to tell their own truth and lies, I will choose Booyah's Momma, Chelsea's Psycho Babble, and Go, Pop, Go!.  Because I know that they will likely all make me look more normal.     

Your Lie Detector Test

Imagine my horror when I found that Poppy had tagged me in her game of lies.  How does one follow Poppy in a game of anything?  Add to that the pressure that Sherri heaped on in the comments section of Poppy's post, and you've got me completely frozen. I have no idea how to complete this task without making an ass out of myself.  Or boring you to tears. Or just plain trying too hard.  When it comes right down to it - I'm a crappy liar.

But here I go anyway.

The following are five lies and one truth.  Your job is to pick out the one that is 100% truth and leave your answer in the comments section.  Let's see who thinks they know me....

1.  Even as a newlywed I had to compete with Fishing for my husband's affections.  His Saturdays were reserved for sleeping until noon and then driving to the murky ponds not far from our tiny apartment to catch a few battered bass and toxic trout.  The alternative was staying home with me, so you can see the allure of a muddy pond, right?  Right.  Well, one afternoon, just after I'd said goodbye to the fishing addict, I noticed he had left his car keys on the kitchen table.  I decided to make one more attempt to get the hubs to stay home.  I stripped down in record time and stood in the living room stark naked waiting for him to re-enter to claim his keys, or me.  Only when he came back in, he was toting a door-to-door salesman behind him.  Selling carpet cleaner, no less.  Awkward.

2.  I once tried to moon my uncle while in a moving vehicle. I was 19 and in my dad's truck with both my parents.  In our family, mooning is a perfectly acceptable greeting if you happen to see a relative traveling the same road as you.  Unfortunately, I bent over too far and ended up pressing my vagina against the passenger window.  When I realized my error, I hurried to pull my pants back up and sit down...and wipe the mark off the window...but the damage was done.  Family reunions have never been comfortable since.

3.  Because we're really cool and stuff, my husband once tried to teach me how to light my farts on fire.  It's kinda sad that we were married and had two kids at the time, but we were really, really poor and had nothing better to do.  And it's kinda funny too, because I won't even light the barbecue grill because I'm afraid of blowing up, but let's go ahead and hold a match to some homemade methane that's coming out of my body, okay?  Alright then.  So the climax to this story is that I can't fart under pressure.  But I got to learn from the master, who is now sometimes referred to as Blue Flame.  Kinda like an Indian name.

4.  Speaking of butts and such, I know how no one can resist telling their childbirth horror stories, and I am no exception.  When my third kid was born there was no pushing involved.  The baby was small and it was actually all I could do to hold him in until the doctor showed up. But when I was given the OK to stop holding him in with everything I had, I let it all go.  And along with baby, out came the contents of my large intestine and the loudest fart I have heard to this day. It was one of those that starts out like a whoopie cushion and ends up sounding like someone left the window open during a storm. Just a big breeze passing through. I think the doc was impressed. And glad he had one of those mask things on.

5.  Several years ago I was in charge of leading the opening exercises for Primary at church, which is the meeting group for kids aged 3-12.  I stood in front of the group of kids and their teachers and announced the title of our opening thong.  Yes, I said thong.  Little trip of the tongue.  I meant to say "opening song".  The adults chuckled, the kids were oblivious, and we moved on.  But apparently I was on a roll.  The kids were especially noisy while I was finishing my announcements, so I blurted out, "My hell, you guys are loud today."  It just sorta slipped out.  I wasn't entirely sure that I had actually said it out loud until I looked up and saw the wide eyes and the very shut mouths and the still bodies of 65 or so children.  What could I do?  I made the best of it and finished my announcements to a silent room. 

6. In high school I was voted "Most likely to become a white house intern".  You know who voted on these things?  Just the teachers.  That's the kind of backwards school I went to.  Shockingly, they gave me that award instead of "Most likely to fart during graduation".  That one fittingly went to the most demure girl I've ever met.  Anyhow, after graduation I tried to find a job for two months until I finally gave up and decided to volunteer to help out the Linda Smith campaign.  She was running for senator and lost.  But it wasn't because I did a crappy job filing pointless documents, that's for sure.  Now I can go to my twenty year reunion and say that the teachers' predictions were correct...sort of.  

So there ya go. Which do you think is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

The Curse of the Puberty Fairy

I was looking down at my legs during my last class of the day. It was pre-algebra, and Mrs. WhateverHerNameWas was spieling about positive and negative numbers. We had been given an assignment of some sort and were sitting in groups on the floor.

That's why I was staring at my legs. First staring, and then trying to hide them somehow underneath my body. Hiding legs as long as mine wasn't easy, even back then, when I was twelve.

You see, that day was the first time that I had noticed that all the girls sitting in my group on the floor had already begun shaving their legs, and mine were still covered with that soft, barely noticeable hair that has never known the harshness of a razor.

On that day, when I came to the knowledge that I was lagging behind my friends in the matters of womanly hygiene, those little hairs were as obvious to me as flecks of pepper in a salt shaker. I was mortified to find that I was still a little kid when my peers had made the transformation into seeming womanhood. After all, one who could wield a razor was surely mastering other feats such as proclaiming their need for Midol or dying their hair!

Panic ensued, and I began to wonder if I was the only one in my 7th grade class who had not started her period and were there other shaving areas I had been innocently neglecting? How did one go about shaving legs, anyhow? Seemed like there was something about using soap or not using soap...

I determined that I would just have to figure it out myself; there was no way I was going to ask my mother or my sister, because surely they would laugh at my inexperience and wonder what had taken me so long to enter the world of puberty management. How could I be so stupid as to think that strapping on my first training bra was the only hurdle to be jumped in the road to maturity? (Which may as well have been yesterday, for all the progress I've made in that area.)

Growing up always came slowly for me. I got "the talk" when I was 8 because my older sister was concerned about contracting AIDS, and when one of us needed to be informed of something, the other had to be included or we would just get the news second-hand. I covered my mouth during the majority of the lecture to stifle my laughs and cover my unsquelchable grin. Still ranks as one of my parent's favorite parenting moments with me, I'm sure.

My period arrived when I was thirteen, and thankfully it came when no one was home, so I was able to deal with the transformation without any embarrassing interference; until my sister showed up with her friend, who somehow discovered my secret and proceeded to congratulate me as though I had accomplished something that I had actually striven to achieve.

Thankfully, there were a few areas where I managed quite well on my own: application of deodorant and knowing when to tell my mother that I could curl my own bangs and still obtain the same degree of mockery from pre-teen vixens at school. That was about it, but it was something.

Seventeen years later, I still find myself sometimes baffled by what mainstream society has deemed "normal" in the beauty department. I have never had a Brazilian Wax, a facial, or any kind of Botox or colon cleanse. Maybe I'm missing out, but I think that as long as I have mastered the basics that I was a little slow to pick up on all those years ago, I'll be fine without the rest.

I do have one regret though. Maybe if my mother had fed me more hormone injected beef, I would have graduated from that training bra by now.

*Originally posted July 2009.

Mind Over Uterus (Alternatly Titled "Shameless Overshare")

*A disclaimer. If you are a male relative of mine or are bothered by discussion of female anatomy or visits to gynecologists, please skip this post and come back tomorrow, when I promise to discuss none of those things.*

The mind is a powerful thing, and I hope that mine doesn't qualify me as crazy - but after this last week I may have to embrace the truth.

On Tuesday I once again convinced myself that there was something very wrong with my insides. Specifically, my reproductive system. The pressure, the bloating, the (excuse me for saying) excessive vaginal discharge, the heavier than normal menstrual bleeding... It had to be bad.

Normally, I try to stay away from any websites like WebMD or diagnose me dot com because I know that I am a raging hypochondriac and I need to just chill out. But this time I thought that one of those symptoms was so far out of my norm that I couldn't ignore it. So I googled my little heart out.

No one should ever google the things I googled.

I soon discovered that I had all the symptoms of ovarian cancer, (which are basically anything from abdominal pressure to eyeball twitches), and I panicked and called to make an appointment with a gynecologist.

This morning I stood in the bathroom ready to prepare for my appointment, and I had to wonder what was the appropriate level of personal topiary? You don't want to leave things untidy, but you also don't want to look like you're trying too hard. I spent a good hour in the bathroom shaving to perfection, taking extra care to avoid a repeat of "the Soul Patch Incident of 2007".

At 11:30 I headed out to the gynecologist. Part of me knew that I was about to have a very routine visit, the other part was wondering if my life insurance company would grant me an advance on my death benefit so I could take my kids to Disneyland before I succumbed to the inevitable.

I walked into that doctor office and wondered if I had gotten the wrong building. It was like a posh ski lodge with muted lighting, huge wood beams in the ceiling, a separate room for kids complete with two story play structure, and everywhere I looked there were women who resembled models from Hustler Magazine, except that most of them had baby bumps. That was the only indication that I was in the right place.

I approached the reception counter and told them my name and who my appointment was with and while I watched the girl type in my info, I gazed down the counter and noticed that all of the staff looked like Bratz dolls. They had gobs of make-up accentuating big eyes and full lips, their hair was teased into playful, spiky messes of intentional seduction, and not one of them could have been over the age of twenty-five.

I started to wonder if I had walked into some kind of cult reproduction of the Playboy mansion.

Then the receptionist handed me one of those vibrating pagers that you get at Olive Garden on Friday nights when 600 people all decided at 7:00 that they wanted crappy Italian food.

"I'm sorry? What's this for?", I asked.

"We'll page you when it's your turn," said Miss Thang.

"My turn to eat? Can I see a menu? I should have brought my husband."

Unamused, Miss Thang went back to her typing.

I sat down and tried not to look at all the pretty women sitting around me. Where were all the old people? The women with hairy upper lips or so many piercings and tattoos that it almost certainly guarantees some kind of diseased pustules on their girl parts? You know - the women who make you feel better about a stranger poking around in your downstairs because nothin' you got is going to be as bad as what the doc will have to deal with on them.

I realized that on this day, I must be that woman for all the sex kittens there.

Not that they were worried about anything with their perfect skin, stilettos, and expertly applied make-up. I actually felt kinda bad for the doctors and hoped they had some kind of system in place to keep themselves calm.

I tried to keep my eyes on my Parent and Child magazine, but I kept stealing glances at the other waiting patients until I felt my pager buzzing on my lap.

Dinner time!

I collected my things, met the nurse who was waiting for me in the hallway and was led to a scale that is not as polite as the one I have at home. I decided to take five pounds off for clothes. And another two for shoes.

Blood pressure, check, then into the exam room. I was given a lovely paper gown and blanket and was told to put on the gown so that it opened in front and lay the paper blanket across my lap.

And it's always a race, because some of those doctors, I swear they try to catch you standing there naked, trying to slip your arms into the holes without tearing it. Give a girl a minute to make herself presentable!

I had barely gotten my rear onto the table and the blanket around my legs when the doc knocked and opened the door. Phew!

He came into the room, and good grief, even the doctor was beautiful! A nice looking man with gray around the temples, dark eyes and a gentlemanly southern accent. He sat down and asked me all the standard questions, including whether I had any questions for him.

This is the part where I had to say things like "discharge" and "bowel movements". I tried to tell myself that he deals with this stuff all the time, but I couldn't look at him while I talked.

What on earth makes a man want to become a gynecologist anyway?

The doc took it all in stride, performed a thorough exam, including one of those obscene ultrasounds that do not take place on top of your stomach.

At the completion of his time with me he pronounced me completely healthy from a gynecological standpoint and suggested I go to see a gastroenterologist regarding my bloating, pressure, and general feeling of constipation in spite of my normal bowel functions.

Turns out I don't have ovarian cancer - just irritable bowel syndrome.

Which means a lifetime of Metamucil staring me in the face.

But at least I got my annual Pap taken care of.

So tonight the muscles in my left arm are sore, even though I haven't used them for anything out of the ordinary. I bet it's the onset of something sinister.

Damn that WebMD!

Primary Faux Pas

I make a fool of myself in church all the time.  I never thought it could get worse than the time when I was conducting opening exercises in Primary and announced the "opening thong" instead of the "opening song" to a bunch of 3-12 year olds.  That was good.  

But it did get worse two Sundays ago when Andrew and I were in nursery (aka Outer Darkness) and my craft project went horribly wrong.  I had purchased two packages of spring colored pipe cleaners and the plan was to have the little two year olds bend them into flower shapes.  Simple, right?  Well, no.  It turns out that pipe cleaner flowers are much harder than they would seem, so all the adults in nursery were making flowers for the kids, who were sitting there, not very patiently, with nothing to do.  One of the women said, "Boys and girls, isn't Sister Kestner so creative?"  

"Yeah," came my response, "the kids are bored out of their minds while we enjoy adult entertainment hour."

That really wasn't what I meant, and I didn't realize the implication I had made until the silence in the room reached a length of about three seconds.  Then I looked up and saw everyone staring at me or avoiding my glance, depending on their personality.  I apologized and then crawled into a hole in the floor.

But seriously, that idea would make nursery a lot more bearable.

Have you ever humiliated yourself at church?  Come on, make me feel better.

Confession Session, Volume 1; Pregnancy Tests

I've taken a lot of pregnancy tests in my life. Some hopefully, and some with dread. Timing is everything. For some reason, I've always felt like they are more reliable if you pee into a cup and let the stick sit in it for the thirty seconds or whatever it is, because what if you just peed on the stick and the one drop of urine that had all the HCG hormone in it didn't hit the stick or didn't hit it hard enough to be absorbed?... I know it's a ridiculous way of thinking, but there you go. I needed to be sure.

So one time, I needed to pee into a cup, but I didn't have a disposable one, and for lack of inspiration as to what else to use, I pulled a ceramic mug out of my kitchen cupboard and used that.

I don't remember if I was pregnant or not on that occasion, but I do remember not knowing what to do with the cup afterward. I couldn't toss it because it was one of Andrew's and I didn't know where he'd gotten it or if someone had given it to him or if it had special meaning or if he would even notice it was missing! So what could I do? I washed it and put it back in the cupboard.

That mug is still sitting in my kitchen cabinet, but you can bet that I never drink out of it!

Like Christmas, except in January and just for me.

I have no shame. We've all seen it before, and the following will be another example.

I wish to tell you of my three purchases tonight. They are three things that I have been waiting to buy for longer than any normal person would wait.

A bra.

A baby gate.

A vacuum.

I think they all warrant their own story.

Once upon a time, like back in 2000, I had a respectable amount of breast tissue. Nothing to brag about, but enough that no one questioned my gender. Then I had Cameron and lost a little. Then I had Ethan and lost a little more. Then I had Drew and lost the little bit that I had left. Then I had Trent and became concave.

Padded bras have been my curse for going on nine years now, and not just a little padding. There's enough there to unroll and sleep on when I go camping. And under wire is an absolute must - without it, there's no point.

And speaking of no point, I decided several weeks ago that there was no reason for me to strap on an ill-fitting, sweat producing padded bra, when I could just go without. My chest looks like that of a pre-pubescent girl, so why bother?

I know that a lot of you are thinking at this point that I just need to go get a professional bra fitting. You're wrong. I measured myself, and the measurement of my bust at the fullest point is actually only a little less than an inch bigger than my measurement just below the bust. I am officially a double A. 34AA. (I apologize to all the men who are reading this and cringing at my "overshare".) But I just don't care anymore. There are worse things than being flat-chested.

So I've known for a while now that I really need to find myself a training bra. (You know - for the cold days.) Because no one actually makes AA bras.

Tonight I was at Target, crossing from one end of the store to the other, and I happened to wind my way through the little girl's department. I walked straight into the bra section, saw a ridiculously multi-colored thing that looked like it belonged on a Miley Cyrus fan, and what do you know - it was on clearance for a buck seventy-five. I grabbed the thing and headed for the front of the store with my head held high. It is a lucky girl who gets to buy her non-padded, (finally!), under wire bra for less than two dollars. Take that you voluptuous vixens!

Cameron and Ethan happened to be with me, and were not quite as thrilled as I was. They asked me who it was for, as though they knew that such a silly thing could not be for a grown woman, and I told them it was for them. They both flushed red and sweat bullets all the way to the car.

So there you have it, I am a nearly thirty-year-old woman in a training bra. At least I won't have to worry about being saggy.


So, the baby gate. I have safety locks on all of my cabinet doors, except for two. Those are the two that Drew broke about a year ago when he learned that if he just yanked hard enough over and over, the lock would eventually snap and the cabinet door would open. He got away with that twice, and then he got what was coming to him and never did it again.

Enter Trent and Bryan.

Trent and Bryan have two things, and only two things, that they like to do during the day. The first is to follow me around and cry/whine/unfold the clothes I just folded. The second is to empty all the drawers and cupboards in the kitchen. There are child-proof latches on them, again, except for the two that Drew got to, but their arms are just flexible enough to reach into the little space provided before the lock kicks in, and pull out anything that their chubby hands can grab at that weird angle. I have spent a lot of time re-washing measuring cups and bottle nipples and cooking utensils that were clean before they were sucked on by drooling toddlers. And then there is the cereal cabinet. Lots and lots of cereal scattered on the floor. And finally, today, the container of cookies dumped and tediously sampled, one by one.

I'd had my fill after the loss of all those chocolate chip cookies. So tonight, I bought a baby gate and giggled and grinned while I installed it. Then Andrew and I took turns impersonating the reactions we are expecting from Drew, Trent, and Bryan in the morning when they find that they can no longer watch me splutter and turn purple in the face after they finish dismantling the order of the kitchen. I can't wait. I'm going to stand in the kitchen, stick out my tongue and give them the world's most grown-up "nee-ner, nee-ner, neeeee-ner!"

Lastly, this might shock you all, but our vacuum broke over three months ago, and I just replaced it tonight. When it broke, I thought, ah, well....I'll get a new one next time we have an extra fifty bucks. And in the mean time, we can play Redneck and use the shop-vac.

So I've been crawling around on my hands and knees for three months now, vacuuming the rug in the living room with the stupid little hose of the shop-vac, and completely ignoring the bedrooms because the three-pronged plug of the shop-vac didn't fit in the two-pronged outlet of the bedrooms. Sure, we have an extension cord, but that seemed like too much work to then have to crawl around with the hose and pretend that I was making a difference in the cleanliness of the carpet.

In case anyone didn't know, a vacuum hose does not do much for carpet. You really need that spinning brush to lift the fibers and comb out all the junk that 5 kids and one husband can make. (I counted Drew twice, because he's just that messy.) Also, our shop-vac is rather noisy. The first time I plugged it in to give the living room a crawl-over, all the residents of the cemetery down the street came knocking at my door to ask what the horrible noise was.

Every time an extra fifty dollars became available, (which I think happened just twice in those three months), it sounded like a lot more fun to go out to dinner or to a movie instead of buying a vacuum. So once we ate at Wingers - no regrets - and the other time... I don't remember what we did. But it was surely more exciting than a vacuum. This is called being poor and making choices.

Tonight, I buckled down and spent the stupid fifty dollars for a vacuum that will get the job done. My carpet is no longer matted, but back to being slightly shag-ish and soft. It was like all the strands stood up and said, "Well, hello again! It's nice to see you! Won't you please walk on us?" And I can't see anymore flecks of crushed Goldfish crackers scattered about the floor.

So excited was I by the clean living room floor, that at 11 PM I took the vacuum back to my bedroom, where two nights ago Drew ate microwave popcorn. The remnants of that popcorn are actually what put me over the edge and made me go get the vacuum. So I started vacuuming away, humming a happy tune, ducking under Andrew's video game controller cord as I tried not to get in the way of his game, and ran over the vacuum's cord. The stinking overzealous vacuum sucked up it's own cord and the motor instantly smelled like the aftermath of an atom bomb.

I have never, in all my years of vacuuming, seen a machine suck up it's own cord. All my previous models have been smart enough to know to stick to food particles and hair, and to leave the cord alone, should I happen to run over it.

Enough of the plastic coating was chewed off the cord that I now have to patch my new toy with electrical tape.

Or, I could use the cord to zap the first kid who decides to climb over the baby gate.

That strange new feeling.

Of late, I have been experiencing a foreign phenomenon where my abdomen causes me much discomfort and pain.  I, admittedly, have hypochondriasis tenancies, and was originally convinced that a tumor was growing on my ovary, probably the left one, and that I surely had no more than a year to live.  Then I realized that I needed to change my bathroom reading.  The only options in the drawer next to the toilet were some book on the Navajo, a VW Club newsletter, (which I have already read several times), or The Christmas Shoes, which is a book based on the depressing country song where a kid buys a pair of shoes for his dying mother on Christmas Eve so that she'll look beautiful if she were to meet Jesus that night.  The mother in the book is dying of ovarian cancer, or uterine cancer, I don't remember which, but apparently it made an impression.  I am now considering seeking professional help, but not for my imagined tumor. 


So it hits me one day that maybe I conjured up my terminal disease because I had been spending too much time in the bathroom reading that stupid book.  When was the last time that I produced anything during my visits to the toilet, anyway?  Am I supposed to be keeping track of how many bowel movements I have in, say, a week?  I thought that was something that you only did with infants?  I feel certain that I've made a deposit during each trip, but does it matter how much you give, or just how often?  Can you be constipated if you've been going regularly?  (Yes, Heidi and Kitti, I am talking to you because there is no way I'm calling a doctor to ask!)  I've always been the type who could just let the fruit ripen and fall from the tree.  Thirty seconds, in and out, no effort required.  That's why I think that my self-diagnosis of constipation must be accurate because yesterday I found myself using birthing techniques to eliminate the brick that was lodged somewhere in my lower intestine.  Pull knees up to chest, tuck chin and push like hell for the count of ten.  Take breath, resume pushing.  And so on and so forth.  I was pleased to find that when it was all over and done with, I did not require stitches, but was disgusted that for all my hard work, I had passed a pitiful excuse for a bowel movement, (although I swear it had corners), and that I had earned a hemorrhoid.  At least, I think that's what it was, and if not, then the hypochondriasis is about to take over again.  I stood there in the bathroom wondering what it would feel like to ride in a car for twelve hours next week with an mn'm type thing resting on the edge of my sphincter.  Thankfully, I will not have to find out, because the bulge has since disappeared. 


I am a notorius hater of water.  It doesn't taste like Dr. Pepper or Cherry Coke, therefore, it must be bad.  I drink mostly soda, a little milk, and occasionally some juice or Crystal Lite.  But when I really think about it, I don't drink a lot of those either.  I am not an idiot, so I know that my poor hydration habits are not helping with my dry skin or migraines, and that is probably the exact cause of my constipation.  When I was younger, my body probably dealt with it just fine, and with age comes a realization that I have turned my digestive system into a sewer treatment plant. 


So what do I do?  Do any of you have tips?  Let me tell you right now that I'm not ready to give up the soda or the pop, (both being the same thing - but I wanted to make sure that everyone from every U.S. geographical region knew to what I was referring), because I'm just not there.  Might not ever be.  But I need some good ways to make sure I drink a lot of water along with my Dr. Pepper.  Water alone is gross, especially our city water.  Does it count as drinking water if you add something to it?  And what do you add that won't give you cancer?  (Again with the hypochondriasis.)  Aspartame is bad, right?  Help me out here, people, my body is begging you!

The Curse of the Puberty Fairy

I was looking down at my legs during my last class of the day. It was pre-algebra, and Ms. Whateverhernamewas was spieling about positive and negative numbers. We had been given an assignment of some sort and were sitting in groups on the floor.

That's why I was staring at my legs. First staring, and then trying to hide them somehow underneath my body. Hiding legs as long as mine wasn't easy, even back then, when I was twelve.

You see, that day was the first time that I had noticed that all the girls sitting in my group on the floor had already begun shaving their legs, and mine were still covered with that soft, barely noticeable hair that has never known the harshness of a razor.

On that day, when I came to the knowledge that I was lagging behind my friends in the matters of womanly hygiene, those little hairs were as obvious to me as flecks of pepper in a salt shaker. I was mortified to find that I was still a little kid when my peers had made the transformation into seeming womanhood. After all, one who could wield a razor was surely mastering other feats such as proclaiming their need for Midol or dying their hair!

Panic ensued, and I began to wonder if I was the only one in my 7th grade class who had not started her period and were there other shaving areas I had been innocently neglecting? How did one go about shaving legs, anyhow? Seemed like there was something about using soap or not using soap...

I determined that I would just have to figure it out myself; there was no way I was going to ask my mother or my sister, because surely they would laugh at my inexperience and wonder what had taken me so long to enter the world of puberty management. How could I be so stupid as to think that strapping on my first training bra was the only hurdle to be jumped in the road to maturity? (Which may as well have been yesterday, for all the progress I've made in that area.)

Growing up always came slowly for me. I got "the talk" when I was 8 because my older sister was concerned about contracting AIDS, and when one of us needed to be informed of something, the other had to be included or we would just get the news second-hand. I covered my mouth during the majority of the lecture to stifle my laughs and cover my unsquelchable grin. Still ranks as one of my parent's favorite parenting moments with me, I'm sure.

My period arrived when I was thirteen, and thankfully it came when no one was home, so I was able to deal with the transformation without any embarrassing interference; until my sister came home with her friend, who somehow discovered my secret and proceeded to congratulate me as though I had accomplished something that I had actually striven to achieve.

Thankfully, there were a few areas where I managed quite well on my own: application of deodorant and knowing when to tell my mother that I could curl my own bangs and still obtain the same degree of mockery from pre-teen vixens at school. That was about it, but it was something.

Seventeen years later, I still find myself sometimes baffled by what mainstream society has deemed "normal" in the beauty department. I have never had a Brazilian Wax, a facial or any kind of Botox or colon cleanse. Maybe I'm missing out, but I think that as long as I have mastered the basics that I was a little slow to pick up on all those years ago, I'll be fine without the rest.

I do have one regret though. Maybe if my mother had fed me more hormone injected beef, I would have graduated from that training bra by now.

Most Embarrassing Moments

I was inspired by another blog to post my most embarrassing moment. There have been many, but there are six that are particularly bad that I haven't blocked out of my memory. I shall elaborate...

#6: Every time my grandfather steps foot in my house, it is an unholy disaster. (Many people have seen my house in terrible condition, but it's the most humiliating when it's him.) We're talking a couch completely piled to the ceiling with laundry that needs to be folded, empty dishes on the floor next to the couch, toys scattered everywhere, the kids pajamas strewn across the room, (all of my children have an aversion to dressing in the privacy of their bedrooms unless there are visitors in our house who might otherwise catch a glimpse of their underwear), and if Grandpa could see into my kitchen - oh the horrors that would meet his eyes there. He never drops by in the moments that the place looks halfway presentable. Never.

#5: In my sophmore year, I transfered from Battle Ground High School to La Center High School. There, I had the "joy" of participating in gym class with girls who actually cared about sports. I was used to, and perfectly comfortable among girls who hated anything that required bouncing a ball while running, jogging in circles, or hitting a shuttlecock with a racket that was anything but a natural extension of their reach. So I faked it. I was left with no choice but to play basketball with most of the members of the girls varsity team and a few guys who also knew what they were doing. P.E. was just an extension to basketball practice to these people, and I was caught in the middle. People always assume that because I am tall, I know how to play. Wrong. I had no idea what the "key" was, how to dribble without looking at my hand, or the proper body movement required to make a lay-in. On one of these dreaded days of basketball I decided to really make an attempt to play so that people wouldn't start to resent that I hadn't somehow acquired a medical exemption for the class. Well, it didn't go over so well. I tried to block a shot that Chris Strickland was making, and I ended up smashing my face into something that felt like a boulder, but which I think was his head or elbow. I went down on all fours, pouring blood from my nose and wishing to be anywhere else in the world. I'm not sure who cleaned up the blood, or if Chris made his shot or not. I hope he missed by a mile.

#4: It wasn't long ago, (thus the embarrassing factor), that my father asked me if I had heard that Stevie Wonder wasn't really blind, that it was all a marketing ploy. I bought it, hook, line and sinker. I was shocked and impressed, and asked someone else in my family if they had heard the news. I think that's when everyone lost it and started laughing at me. Silly me. I should know by now not to believe anything that my father tells me. I have since passed that wisdom on to my children. They now have a nice, healthy doubt for any story Papa tells them.

#3: Let's venture back to 7th grade, where we probably all have some humiliating memories of Junior High. I was in love with a boy named Jason Schattauer. (I feel good about not being sure of the spelling of his last name; it suggests healing.) I got the butterflies every time we passed in the hallway. I'm not sure why I had a thing for him. He had floppy hair, much like Conan O'Brian, and a stupid laugh, a loping walk and was not exactly a gentleman, as we are about to learn. I was in gym class wearing a lovely pair of neon green or orange shorts, I don't remember which, but I owned a pair in each color, so it could have been either. I was blissfully unaware that neon had gone out of style years before, but I probably wouldn't have cared had I known. My class and I were standing in 6 lines waiting for the teacher to finish roll call and assign us the ridiculous chore of playing dodge ball or some other sort of torture. I think I was talking to one of my friends when I felt my neon shorts being yanked down. Chivalrous Jason had sneaked up behind me and pantsed me right there in front of 30 or so of my peers. Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't had a hole in my underwear. If only the cosmos could enlighten us as to the days we would be showing off our undergarments to the public, we could always be certain we were adequately covered! Anyway, I turned my usual shade of maroon, pulled my shorts back up and tried to laugh it off. Sadly, I don't think this ended my infatuation for Jason. Too bad our future selves can't pay us a visit and set us straight during those sickening teenage years.

#2: I just re-thought posting this one...well, we'll do it in an anonymous way. We went to visit someone when Cameron was about 4 or 5 years old, and that person was on their front porch when we arrived. Andrew and I stood outside with said person, visiting for a minute, while Cameron and Ethan headed inside. It was only a matter of seconds before Cameron popped his head out of the front door and exclaimed, "It smells like crap in here!" Withering moment of mortification.

And finally,

#1: This happened 21 years ago, but it still makes me cringe to think about it. I was the awkward 8 year old in third grade with huge glasses and frizzy hair. Also wore outfits that my mother swears she let me pick out, but I firmly believe that she forced upon me. I had my first major crush on a big-eared boy named Brandon Minor. He was the younger brother of my older sister's best friend, Becky. Well, lucky me, my parents went out of town overnight and we got to spend the night at the Minor's house. They were in our ward and friends with my parents, so it seemed a good choice to them and I was not complaining. I remember nothing of that weekend except for the one incident. The incident that made my face burn like red hot fire for the rest of my third grade year, and would have continued long after if we hadn't moved. It was in the late afternoon when Sister Minor told us it was time for showers. So I went first while everyone else was playing outside. I used the downstairs bathroom, and when I was nice and clean, I realized there were no towels in the bathroom and I hadn't brought my pajamas into the bathroom with me. I stood there for a long time wondering what to do. I couldn't call for help as everyone was outside. So while I pondered my predicament, I air dried. Finally, I realized that I would have to make a run for it to Becky's room down the hall where my clean clothes lay in wait. I have no idea why I didn't just put my dirty clothes back on for the venture down the hall, but you know what they say about hind-sight. I slowly opened the door just a crack to make sure the coast was clear. Then I shut the door again, took three deep breaths, prepared to make a run for it, and threw open the door. Then I froze. In the nano second that I had been gathering my courage, Hunky Brandon had come down the stairs and was witness to my full frontal display. We both stood completely motionless for what seemed like an hour, but was probably just a sliver of a moment. But I will forever remember his hand still holding the banister, the look of shock on his face and one of his feet still resting on the last stair. When I finally regained control of my naked 8 year old body, I slammed the door back shut and waited for my sis and her pal to come back inside. I sat there, freezing cold in the bathroom, still too dumb to re-clothe myself in my dirty attire, running through it all over and over in my mind, sure that on Monday morning I would be the laughing stock of Ms. Crandall's class and possibly the entire school. Let's all remember that just because a third grader has nothing special going on in the naked department doesn't mean that it wasn't the end of my life. If only I had possessed the unnatural curves of today's average third grader, I could have strutted my stuff into class on Monday with a well deserved aura of pride. Luckily, the worst that came of it, aside from my damaged mental state, was a flaming face every time I saw Brandon for the rest of the school year and whenever he was drug to our house with his parents. Not much has changed since then in the naked department. I still have the flat chest and unshapely legs, but I like to think that if the same thing happened again today, the victim of my parade wouldn't have quite such a profound look of horror on their face. I'd settle for a giggle.

A Fashion Faux Pas?

Today I sat with Cameron's class during Primary singing time. Oh, how I love singing time. It's the only place where I can sing my heart out and no one gives me funny looks, because everyone is singing off pitch and horribly, so I blend in nicely. I believe it was during Teach Me to Walk in the Light that I was looking around the room, admiring all the lovely singing children, when I nearly got whip-lash. An 11 year old girl was sitting sweetly in a chair wearing the same skirt I had worn to church last week. Well, I wore it as a skirt; she wore it as a tube top dress thingy. Forgive my lack of fashion-term knowledge. My "skirt" is purple and paisley...very spring-ish and fun, and is the sort that has the thick elastic section at the top to hold it fitted to your waist. Does that make sense? So, this 11 year old wore it up over her chest with a t-shirt underneath it. I just sat there with my mouth hanging open in horror, wondering if I had somehow wandered into the little girl's section of the store and bought a child's dress, (albeit a rather whorish one if, in fact, it was a child's piece of clothing). At any rate, I figure that since I loathe dresses and skirts of all kind and therefore have very few of them, I will be forced to wear my skirt/dress every now and again, if only to give the denim skirt a reprieve. I just won't wear it anywhere near the primary room in case any other children happen to share my taste in clothing on that particular day, and some snide 6 year old boy points it out for everyone to gawk at. Feels like being back in Jr. High where even weirdos and tiny children make me feel like a loser!