Shawn Macdonald's Blog

My boyfriend has this thing about veggies. He feels that they are healthy, and that I should eat more of them. Apparently, the scientific community agrees with him.

What do they know?

First of all, I would like to say that raw vegetables make me gassy. This cannot be good for the ozone layer, and I am very environmentally conscientious.

Second, vegetables grow out of dirt that is usually laced with fertilizer. Fertilizer is poop. Who, in their right mind, eats dirt and poop?

Third … I don’t like vegetables.

Actually, that’s not totally true. I am a big fan of deep fried zucchini. I would eat a shoe if it was breaded and deep-fried. I have also been known to enjoy a serving of broccoli in cheese sauce. Yes, I lick the cheese sauce off, and leave the broccoli, but the cheese sauce was in contact with the broccoli at one point, so I believe that it counts as a serving of vegetables. And I am a huge fan of French fries.

Yes, I count the potato as a vegetable. It grows in a garden, so it is a vegetable. A tomato is also a vegetable, so if I have a serving of French fries and dip them in catsup I am, in fact, having a double serving of vegetables.

Apparently ‘those in the know’ consider a potato a botanical vegetable, but not a nutritional vegetable. What the hell? They also claim that a tomato is, in fact, a fruit.

Let’s start with the whole potato thing. A vegetable is a vegetable. It’s not fair to qualify it, just because it isn’t, perhaps, the healthiest food on the planet. What if we classified people that way? What if the only real people were skinny people? What if we chubsters weren’t really people, but some sort of sub-classification of the human race? I suppose it could be argued that if none of us ate French fries (the non-vegetable-vegetable) then none of us would be overweight (the non-people-people). But I don’t like that argument, so never mind.

And as for classifying a tomato as a fruit? If a product of nature cannot be tastefully dipped in chocolate, it is not a fruit. That’s the rule.

Have I successfully defended my argument that French fries and catsup are a double whammy of vegetables? I do believe that I have.

Remember, back in the day, when we did everything in our power to hide the basic fact of nature that women menstruate? I remember slipping a tampon up my sleeve, praying that it didn’t fall out on the way to the bathroom. I even had an elaborate scheme all planned out for what I would do in the event of such a horrific tragedy. I would leave the country. All right, so maybe not an elaborate scheme, but that was the plan. If anyone ever figured out that I, a young female, had a period once in a while, I would never be able to show my face in public again. The very idea of such a catastrophe was simply too humiliating to consider!

Happily, today’s young women are much more secure in their womanhood.

About ten years ago, I was conned into driving six young women (two of them were my daughters) to an AAU basketball game. It was an overnight trip, the destination about two hours away. As they were loading so much luggage that one would think we were going on a six-week vacation, one of my daughters yelled, “Mom! Grab me a couple of tampons, would you?!” To my Victorian way of thinking, it was gutsy enough to have yelled such a thing. But not only had she yelled it, but she had yelled it from the minivan, which was sitting in the driveway on a busy street! Wow! My girl had some balls!

Then I hear, “Yeah, Mrs. Mac, I need a couple of tampons too!”.

Before I knew it, the pleas for tampons were coming from all directions. At this point, it would be remiss of me not to mention how delighted I was to know that I was making a two-hour trip with a minivan full of young women who were being visited by ‘Aunt Flo’. It was going to be a long drive.

Anyhow … finally, in an act of solidarity towards my courageous young ‘sisters’, I braved taking an entire box of tampons and tossing it from my front door to a pair of waiting hands in the minivan. The box seemed to fly through the air as if in slow motion. I was so proud of myself! I was finally reaching the same level of maturity as my sixteen-year-old daughter and her friends! I was woman, hear me roar!

Naturally, the young woman who was supposed to catch the box dropped it. Naturally, the box burst open, and tampons were rolling all over the driveway. Naturally, I wanted to leave the country.

As I was mentally reconfiguring our travel plans so that we could head to Canada rather than Vermont, the girls were picking up tampons. Casually. As if it were the most natural thing in the world. The topic of conversation while they were picking up these embarrassing items? They were teasing the girl who had missed the pass. Not because she had committed such a humiliating faux pas as to drop a box of tampons in such a public spot, but because she was the team’s point guard and catching passes was her job.

Slowly but surely, I am learning a thing or two from today’s generation of women. I am now able to whisper the word ‘period’ in a semi-public setting. Last week, I bought a box of tampons at the grocery store and made no effort to hide it beneath the ice cream. And if I were to drop a tampon in a public place today? No, I would not make plans to leave the country. That would be silly and immature.

But I might plan a trip to northern Maine.

What is it about the ‘f-bomb’ that is so darn effective? The word is vulgar and overused, and yet we continue to drop it at the slightest excuse. And no, I am not proud to admit that I am a member of the ‘we’ that overuses that word.

Over the years I have made sporadic attempts at cleaning up my language. I am a writer. Theoretically, I should have a large enough vocabulary to be able to replace that curse with something more creative. Yet when I am really frustrated, or really angry, nothing seems to verbally express that emotion quite as well as the f-bomb. “Intercourse you!” is simply not satisfying, and “What the fornicate?!” just makes me giggle.

At one point, I came to the conclusion that it was the ‘uck’ part of the word that was really providing the verbal satisfaction. ‘Uck’ is a guttural sound. It has some oomph to it. So I tried various other ‘uck’ words as substitutes. It turns out that calling someone a mother-ducker is just silly. Mother-mucker? Nope. Mother-schmucker? Still not quite right. Mother-pucker? Not exactly an insult if you have a kid who plays hockey.

So, try as I might, I still drop the f-bomb from time to time. I try to keep it safely locked behind my lips, allowing it out only on special occasions … like when I dropped the cast iron skillet on my foot. If that wasn’t an f-bomb-worthy event, I don’t know what is!

Many years ago, my youngest sister went through what I like to refer to as a ‘bohemian’ phase. She was ahead of her time, the original Green Girl. She recycled every scrap of paper, she walked to her destination whenever possible … and she quit shaving her legs.

Let me make one thing clear. The women in my family are a hairy bunch. The hair on our legs couldn’t grow faster if we fertilized it. And by the time my dear sister was a few months into her bohemian rhapsody, it was a miracle she wasn’t tripping over the flowing locks of hair that were sprouting off her legs.

When she was going through this phase, I was the mother of three small children. Despite being perpetually exhausted, I managed to find the time to shave my legs every second or third day. If day four rolled around without a shave, a light breeze would have me feeling as if there was a bug crawling on me. Day five? It was quicker and easier to hop in the shower to shave it than it was to braid it so that it wouldn’t get too many snarls and become unmanageable.

Oh, how I wish that hairy legs were considered sexy! Wouldn’t that be great? Imagine never having to shave or wax your legs again! If hairy legs were considered sexy, I would be a cover girl! Or at least my legs would be.

And while it would be rough on the manufacturers of shaving tools for women, it would open up a whole new arena of marketing ideas! Imagine tiny little barrettes for leg hair! Special leg hair shampoos and conditioners! Hair dye for legs! The possibilities are endless! Even beauticians could get in on the act. “I’d like a shampoo and a trim, please.”

For those few women who weren’t blessed with luxurious legs full of hair – I’ve known a few of those women, lucky bitches! – there would be leg hair wigs! Some clever entrepreneur would make a killing!

So who’s with me? Should we start a new trend? No? Well, a girl can dream.

Israel recently passed a law banning ultrathin models. Hallelujah and pass the ice cream!

The new requirements in Israel now call for that a model have a body mass index of at least 18.5. In plain English, that means that a six foot tall model would have to weigh at least 136.5 pounds. That is still an incredibly skinny woman, but it is progress.

And if the photo used in an ad has in any way been manipulated to make the model look thinner, that information must be disclosed! No more airbrushing away the pounds! Bad news for my dream of one day becoming a middle-aged Israeli model, but good news for the general public.

I am so impressed. This is a country that puts their money where their mouth is! And now some of these models will be able to put a little food where their mouth is! If someone told me that I had to gain weight for my job … well, the very idea brings me so much joy that I have a little tear in my eye just thinking about it!

I think what might have impressed me the most about this whole thing is that the new law was backed by a top modeling agent, Adi Barkan. His quote about the current stable of models? “They look like dead girls.”

It’s true. Many of today’s models look like walking skeletal systems draped in haute couture. And do you know what they don’t look like? Me.

It has taken me most of my life to figure out that just because a pair of skinny jeans look awesome on a six-foot tall, ninety-two pound woman, does not mean that they are going to look awesome on a five-foot nothing woman who is not about to disclose her weight. Needless to say, it is not ninety-two pounds, and I am about a foot shorter than most of these women.

The fashion industry needs to step up and start using models that are built like the rest of us. The real test of a fashion genius is whether or not he can clothe the masses. Show me that a short, chubster like myself looks rockin’ in a burlap sack, and I will buy that burlap sack! Hell, I’ll probably buy those burlap sacks in three different colors!

In the meantime, I will continue to suffer through calculating the results of the model-to-me conversion equation. Subtract twelve-inches from her height. Add forty pounds. Multiply by the results of having given birth three times. And the answer is … No. I will not look good in short-shorts and a crop top. Imagine my surprise.

It is beyond comprehension that, in this day and age, there is no such thing as a support group for the technologically challenged. We are people too. If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you cut us off in traffic, do we not give you the finger?

And yet we remain alone and scared in this new world that is ruled by the technologically savvy. We hang our heads in shame as we write a note using the ancient art of putting a pen to paper. We live in fear that one day in the future pens will be illegal, and that anyone found owning a sheet of paper will be publicly flogged. Fear of humiliation forces us to fumble with our tiny little cell phones that do not fix comfortably between the shoulder and ear.

We are confused by a Facebook ‘poke’. We don’t understand why we must click a button to let someone know that we ‘like’ what they have to say. And, to our shame, we do not feel the need to know the every move of our friends and family. If our second cousin, three times removed, is going to take a nap, it seems unnecessary to inform all six-hundred-and-forty-two of their closest friends.

And what is this ‘twitter’ thing? I still don’t understand. If you actively ‘twitter’, doesn’t that make you a ‘twit’? Isn’t that still a bad thing?

I have been told that the best way to search for a support group, if one exists, is to ‘google’ it. Huh? Isn’t a ‘google’ a bunch of geese? What do geese have to do with support groups?

So I fumble with my stupid cell phone. I swear at my computer when I politely ask it to perform a simple task, and it refuses. And as for my DVR … I still don’t know what that thing is supposed to do.

The good news? I have finally mastered the use of my remote control. I can change the channel, I can turn the volume up … and down! Any day now I expect to master call waiting on my cell phone.

So who needs a support group? Not me, that’s for sure. I’ll just poke that twitter, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll simply google a kindle full of spam. Oh, yeah. I’ve got this.

I’m working on writing the sequel to I Married a Gay Man, which is aptly titled I Married a Gay Man’s Brother. Okay, so what I’m really doing is writing this blog. And sipping a little coffee. Then I’ll probably go clean the bathroom. And then maybe do the dishes.

Then, I’m pretty sure, I’ll get back to writing. Writing is what I should be doing, and I have set a deadline for myself that needs to be met. Or I might vacuum. The living room really needs it. Vacuuming is important too. The cats are shedding machines, and it is possible that one day I might develop an allergy to cat hair, so it’s a health issue and good health is important.

But then I’ll get back to writing. It’s not that difficult to write a novel. It’s all about perseverance. And I will persevere! After I get the laundry started. And then I should call my oldest daughter. Did I tell you that she and her boyfriend are looking at buying their first house? Buying a house is a monumental task, and they need my help. Aiding them in their time of home-buying need is a priority right now.

When I get off the phone, I’ll settle right in to getting some writing done. I know how I want the story to go, and I am in love with all of the characters … so it will be fun, and I will probably finish at least a chapter. After I call work to make sure that everything is running smoothly in my absence. My ‘real job’ is important. It pays the mortgage, puts ice cream in the freezer, and it pays for my Internet service! Yes! If I don’t have Internet service, anything I write will be useless! So I simply must check in on things at work, despite the fact that they always call me if they need anything. It is not out of the realm of possibility that they lost my phone number. It could happen!

But then I will get back to my writing. Unless I can think of another excuse.

Is there anything on television these days besides reality shows? Seriously. I simply cannot believe that this particular genre of television has become so successful! Who watches this crap? It is mindless and voyeuristic and a ravenous parasite to the very essence of intellect!

Dance Moms, for instance. These are some crazy bitches, and they allow their children, their adorable little girls, to be bullied and browbeaten by yet another crazy bitch! Episode after episode! Although, I must say, those little girls can dance!

And how about Toddlers and Tiaras? What would possess any parent to take their children to tanning booths for the sake of winning a lousy crown? And the money they invest in these pageants! It’s crazy! And what about that ‘Honey Boo Boo’ kid and her go-go juice! Insanity!

Then, of course, there are the old standbys, such as Jersey Shore and The Kardashians. Where do they find these people, and who would waste precious hours of their existence watching them bungle their lives? Can you believe that Kourtney is preggers again! And Snooki is knocked-up too! What the heck! Could we be witnessing the birth of the next generation of reality show stars? Heaven help these poor children.

America’s Next Top Model. Who in their right mind would willingly watch Tyra Banks teach a bunch of undernourished children how to strut their stuff? By the eighth season, I could no longer stand the sound of her voice, and was forced to mute my television and try to read a bunch of Botoxed lips. It might have been my lack of skills in the lip-reading department, but I could have sworn that each of the contestants was saying, “Feed me! Oh, would someone please fix me a sandwich!”.

Don’t even get me started on The Bachelor!

So I ask you … who watches this crap?

I never understood the concept of my mother’s reading glasses. She would wear them while reading anything, but take them off to do anything as simple as looking at me when I came to tell her something really important like that my brother was hogging the bathroom. Lest you think that I was tattling about something unimportant, I would like to point out that I grew up with seven people in the house and only one bathroom. I would also like to point out that nobody ever wanted to follow my brother into the bathroom. Even with an open window and an industrial strength fan, it took a good fifteen minutes for that bathroom to be fit for human habitation. I’m just saying.

Anyhow, it made no sense to me that my mother couldn’t read without wearing those glasses, but she could see one of us stealing a cookie from fifty feet away. And if she didn’t happen to have her reading glasses handy, she had to hold the reading material at arms length to be able to read it. What was that about?

Then one day I realized that I was holding my book at – gulp – arms length. I pulled the book closer to me. Nope. Not happening.

I immediately made an appointment with the eye doctor. I had always enjoyed 20/20 vision, so clearly I had somehow contracted some sort of horrible eyesight-destroying disease! I was going blind, I tell you! Blind!

My eye doctor didn’t share my concern. According to her, I was just getting old and my eyesight was getting old right along with me. I’ve never cared for that woman.

So now I understand about Mom’s reading glasses. I can’t read without the glasses, but I can’t walk across the room with the glasses. I can see far away, but I can’t see close-up. Okay, so it still doesn’t make sense to me, but I can relate to it.

I have reading glasses on the dining room table. I have them next to the bed, a pair in each bathroom, a pair next to my computer, a pair in my purse … At this point, I might own more pairs of reading glasses than I own of pairs of shoes.

My 38-year-old boyfriend (my enviable status as a ‘cougar’ is the subject for another day) likes to brag about his 20/10 eyesight, and he thinks its ‘cute’ that I can’t even read a menu without my glasses. He just doesn’t understand why I don’t have more of a sense of humor about the subject.

Yesterday, I noticed that he was holding the newspaper just a little further away from his face than he usually does. Heh, heh, heh.

I live by the list.

Sad but true.

There was a time that I could remember things, complex things. I could remember algebraic equations – didn’t know how to use them, but I could remember them. I could remember birthdays, anniversaries … all kinds of stuff! If there was a list of fifteen things I needed at the grocery store, I didn’t need to write it down. It was all right there, neatly stored in the old memory banks!

I don’t know when it happened, or how it happened, or why it happened – okay, so I might have an idea of why it happened. I suspect it has something to do with old age, but that’s just a suspicion, so don’t quote me. But one day I realized that I couldn’t remember much of anything. I would be heading down to the basement to get something, and stop halfway down the stairs to try to remember what the heck that something was. I’d turn around and go back upstairs, and about the time I hit the top step, voila! I’d remember it! By the time I hit the basement floor, poof! It was gone again. My precious memory bank had gone from looking like a well-organized pantry, everything in its proper place, to looking like something you’d see in Hoarders. Love that show, by the way. Makes me feel really good about myself.

I digress. And yes, that is because I had forgotten what I was writing about. Anyhow, it was when my memory began to falter that I began to rely on ‘the list’. Before I knew it, my kitchen table was the home to several lists.

Grocery list? Check. Work list? Check. List of chores to be accomplished today? Check. List of chores to be accomplished during the week? Check. List of lists to be written? Check.

It turns out that while I am less than happy about the shabby shape of my memory, I find that I really like my lists. At the end of the day, when every item on the ‘things to accomplish today’ list is checked off, I find myself doing a little fist pump. Yes! I win! I completed ‘the list’! I have even considered making a little scrapbook of completed lists to help me remember the good times of bathrooms cleaned and laundry folded. I haven’t put ‘scrapbook of lists’ on a list yet, though, so I haven’t done it.

The good news? Now I get to cross ‘write a blog about lists’ off my list! Woo-hoo!