Your bra's best-before date...

I'm needing some lift and separation folks.  What with my apparently swelling mammary glands - I'm finding that my standard bras don't seem to be doing the shaping that they ought.  The cups are a little wonky, the band is stretched...

I can't remember the last time I bought a real bra.  You know,  a bra that wasn't supposed to stay on only until David got hard.  A bra that you get on sale at Victoria's Secret or La Senza... the  balconette bras with matching cheekini - the '15 seconds until naked' bras, the 'va-va-va-VOOM' bras, the 'giving your partner the opportunity to motorboat you' bras.  I've got at least a dozen of those bras. 

But those bras have nothing to do with the type of  bras that actually offer true support to your girls.  The bras that Jane Russell and Sophia Loren wore under their clothes.  I need one of those bras.  The t-shirt bras are all well and good, they sure as shit mask those pesky nipples, but they don't really shape the breasts. They do not give me the shape that I really want underneath my clothes.  I want two distinct breasts - both level and pointing straight ahead, with no added back fat.

How much is that gonna run me?  What do I have to lay out in 2014 for that kind of bra?  The last time I bought a chi-chi, properly fitted, read-about-it-in-a-magazine, where the sales clerk comes into the change room with you and gets up close and personal, bra was probably five years ago.  I know it was well over  $100.00.  If I'm spending over $100 on a piece of clothing, I still want to be wearing it in five years' time, don't you?  I don't even know where that bra is any more.  Even if it no longer fits me, I should, at the very  least, have it framed in a shadow box for posterity.  

"That... That is my ESB.  European Shaping Bra.  The girls never looked as good as they did in her.  And to your right, you'll find..."

Gearing up for a bra expedition is akin to going to war.   Nobody ever re-measures before they go.  You can get the gals as Victoria's Secret (all touted as bra experts) to wrap you in their measuring tape, but they will never be as good as that little old Italian woman who's been in the bra industry for 50 years and who can look at your tatas and instantly know that you are not the D cup you thought, but instead an F.  "NO!  No, you don't want that!  You want this!"  And then she holds out something so un-pleasing to the eye, so industrial in style that you could be filming a niche-market porn film.  But you are terrified of displeasing Tia Rosa, so you slink into the changing room and put it on...  It still looks awful.  "Put on your top!!" she orders.  Cowed, you do.

You come out... your girls are... perfect.  They are up and out - when you turn, the bra's band hasn't dissected your back fat into above and below... an angels' chorus sounds, a divine light envelopes you... And all you have to do to achieve this, is to throw everything you think you know about your sizing out the window and not be defined by the number you thought you were.  Does it fit?  Do you have two equally sized, upright breasts?  Then you're good to go.  It doesn't matter if five years ago you were a 34 DD.  Now you are a 38 C, or a 42 F - or whatever the number and letters are - if you're wearing the right size, I can guaran-freaking-tee you that you'll feel better about yourself.    From my mouth to Tia Rosa's ears... 

Mad Cats R Us

We turn them crazy...  our cats.  They start off normal, but somehow along the way, they lose their little cat  minds.  After a move, or the introduction of new kittens - they invariably go off their nut.

Minuit went mental when we went to live in New York for 6 months.  She had been fine until then.  We'd housed her when she was about 16 weeks, in that gawky, teenager stage of kitten.  She was snuggly and playful and svelte - until we went to New York.  She didn't seem to mind the trip down.  Her innate curiosity came out.  She didn't hide.  She sat either on our laps or on the stack of pillows beside Rissa in the backseat...  She chirrupped and purred contentedly.

The minute we opened the door of the apartment in New York, Minuit had a mental breakdown.  She disappeared for a week - the only proof  of a cat residing with us was a used litter box.  She didn't eat.  She would run from newcomers - skittered past David as if he was the Great White Cat-Eater - so fabled in cat mythology.  By the time we left New York - our svelte little kitten had morphed into a jittery mass of feline pulchritude.

Minuit remains terrified of David, even though, during this last move, he was the one to sit on the bottom cellar stair for quarter of an hour stretches to coax her to eat.  He was the one to cuddle her into his arms and carry her upstairs into our bedroom.  He was the one who put the electric blanket into the cellar, because he worried that she'd catch a chill.  If David so much as takes a breath near her while she's eating, Minuit high-tails it back upstairs under our bed.  Which is kind of hard for her now, seeing as her back end doesn't have full mobility since her spontaneous paralysis during the move in March.

"Can you grab the cutlery, hon?"

"I can't.  Minuit's eating."  David stands stock-still in the middle of the room, barely breathing.

When David is in the 'office' (loosely named - we can't fit a desk chair remotely close to the desk area), it takes Minuit a full 5 minutes to make her way past him.

Her head appears at the top of the stairs.  She ceases all movement when she spots him.  Impossibly balanced on her weak back legs - methinks it's through sheer force of will - because she has to sit side-saddle to eat now.  One paw moves imperceptibly, then the next.   Eyes wide, terror-filled, glued to the monster that stands feet away from her.  She hugs the wall until she is within inches of him and then careens past at Mach 10, chased, she is certain, by the  Hounds of Hell.

Steve, started talking to himself in the new house.  He prowls and yowls.  He's jonesing for the cellar.  Ever since we stopped letting the cats downstairs,  he now wanders the main floor crying to himself.  Rolling on the floors and wallowing in his despair before then sitting at the cellar egress door bawling.

"Why?  Why won't you let me down there?  WHY?!?  WHY?!?  You hate me, is that it?  You despise my very being... WHY?!?"

 I don't know what was so damned exciting about that damp, dank cellar - but it's the only place that Steve wants to be now.

And Lola?  Lola has started licking her nether regions bald since we moved here. 

That is NOT a white patch on her stomach.
It's where she is now bald. 

(It must be an after-the-move thing, because we had another cat, Bardolph, who licked himself bald from the waist down when we moved to our last house.)  She has also because an expert in cat parkour.  She likes to demonstrate her abilities in this area between the hours of midnight and 5:00 a.m.  She bounces off walls, bounds across our bed - only our bed, mind you - emitting blood curdling cat sounds.  She'll jump on my pillow and then bound from there to my feet. 

This house is 1/2 the size of our last one and yet she manages to get lost in it.  We'll be upstairs in bed and hear her wailing in the night.

"Lola!  LOLA!!!  We're up here!!"

"Prrrrrrrowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwl?"

"Up here dopey!"

"Prrrrrrowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwl?

At which point I usually leave the bed to stand at the top of the stairs "Puss-pussing" until she sticks her head around the corner of the bottom of the stairs. 

"Come on you dope.  It's bedtime..."

That's when Lola usually tears by me and bounds across the bed, using David's stomach as a trampoline.  We then shoo all three cats out of our bedroom, but that only works to a point, because our bedroom is Minuit's safe haven and at 5:00 a.m. she's the one strong-pawing the door.  Putting her shoulder into it. 

Thud.  Thud.  Thud.  "Please let me in.  Please, please PLEASE, let me in!!!  LET ME IN!   LET ME IN!!!  LET ME THE HELL IN!!!"

So, if you're finding that your cat is just a little too sane for you?  Send it our way - we'll set you up.

Game of Thrones could give a gal a complex

Breasts.  Oh, the breasts on  Game of Thrones... They are everywhere.  You can't possibly miss them.   People have been making graphs about the boobs per episode in the show.  They are the pertest, highest, smallest areola'd breasts I've ever seen.  The Red Priestess Melisandre?  SPOILER ALERT Has areolas the size of  dimes.  I mean sure, she's probably cold, most of the time when you're seeing her breasts she's in a bath, or a cool breeze (or at least the breeze from off-camera fans), so it's understandable that her nipples get all tightened, but...  Milisandre's nipples look to be the size of pencil erasers - albeit raspberry-tipped in colour.

If a gal is auditioning for Game of Thrones, is that just a part of the process?  "Great audition!  Loved your take on that scene, beautiful range...  Now if you could just do that scene again naked..."   Quick question: Where are the real boobs?  It has become clear to me that Game of Thrones must be cast entirely of women who have never breast fed a child.

Hate to break it to the Game of Thrones viewers, but womanly areolas are not the size of dimes.  My areolas?  (Please excuse me while I grab the ruler.)  Holy crap!  That can't be right.  They are three inches across!  Seriously?  Let me just measure again...  yep, still three inches.  Now that's at a dead stand-still with no cool breeze or arousal to erect those nipples, and I am a D cup, but I don't think that I'm alone in sporting a pair of ta-tas with areolas larger than a silver dollar. 

I know that the titillation factor on the show is out for a certain demographic, but people aren't just watching for the gratuitous soft porn.  Right... RIGHT???  It's giving viewers a totally unrealistic idea of what to expect from your average free-range breast. The same way that porn makes dudes think that you can have a triple E cup size that doesn't sag.  The producers are really doing a disservice to viewers everywhere by not throwing in a couple of pendulous breasts with dollar-pancake-sized areolas.

And while we're at it, how about some equal full-frontal for the dudes on the show?  You can't possibly tell me that boobs are less a sexual characteristic than the penis.  I mean they're right there - out in front - TA-DA!  Yes they're meant to breast feed our young, but that's not the first thing that goes through a person's head when they see them. "Hey look at those great lactation glands..."  is not tripping off the tongues of viewers.  Sure, the occasional male ass gets thrown in, but it's never for long and you never get the same fondling of a male ass that you get of the female form.

EQUAL FONDLING!
REAL BOOBS!
THROW IN A PENIS NOW AND AGAIN!

I'll have to work on the chant, but you get my drift.

The Ladylike Pee

I had a sneezing fit at the office.  When the sneezes hit, I held onto my desk and clamped my knees together as if the freedom of the Western world depended on it.  I hadn't needed to go to the bathroom before that moment, but after the 5 sneezes, it seemed like it would be prudent for me to relieve myself before I started my walk home.

From the Poo Pourri Campaign - not technically the same bodily function
but the visual was too perfect to pass up.

I hefted my 1950s floral skirt around my waist, quickly de-briefed and plunked myself down on the toilet. The subsequent sneeze hit me completely unprepared.  One minute I was having a genteel little tinkle, the next - I was projectile peeing.  It was as if a water balloon had been tossed from a great height against a wall.  Two enormous sneezes wracked through my body.  Upon their completion, I resembled a hurricane survivor.  Damp from the waist down, pee on the toilet seat, pee on the floor in front of the toilet seat and pee on the wall 6 feet away from the toilet seat.  It was impressive.  I hadn't thought there could be that much urine in a gal's bladder.  I had underestimated my innate power.

It made me think:  Incontinent, post-partum women will be our champions. Raging forest fires can and will be extinguished with feminine aid. Planes full of  weak-bladdered women surrounded by pepper-filled pot-pourri sachets will be launched into the skies.  Primed with full bladders (having drunk their weight in their beverage of choice), taking deep breaths of sneeze-inducing pepper, legions of leaky ladies will let loose and obliterate fires from above.  We are the new super heroes.  Clad not in capes, but crotchless panties, we will save the world. 

Lumberjack in Drag

"Have you decided what colour you'd like for your nails?"  The esthetician points with her chin over to the selection of nail polishes on the counter as she massaged my calves.

I pick up the nail wheels, vacillating between the reds and the pinks. Seduce Him (although that should really be Seduce Him/Her - I know plenty of gals out there who love it when their partners wear bright red polish on their extremities.  Blushing Bride - HAH!  Royal Tease - Seriously??

Holding the wheel down near my feet to check out the colours in context to their eventual placement, I startle when she says,  "What about your fingernails?"


"Oh, no, I don't do fingernails," I immediately say.

Because I don't.  Not with my hands.  I have big strong 'peasant' hands.  Or so I've been told.  I can't ever buy vintage gloves because my hands won't fit into them.  The girth of my hand is a whopping 8.25 inches.  If I place my hands up against David's, his hands are just slightly larger than mine.  And he's got big hands.

"Nope.  No thank you.  I'd just feel like a lumberjack in drag."

"What?  No!" The esthetician admonishes me.  She grabs my hands.  Splays them out for all the world to see.  "You have strong hands.  Nice long fingers.  Your nails are in good shape.  Don't let anyone tell you that you can't wear polish."

It was revelatory.  'Don't let anyone tell me...'  Nobody, had told me I couldn't wear nail polish.  That was all on me.  A passing comment from years before had apparently scarred me.  The same way when your 4th Grade Art teacher tells you you can't draw, or a relative says you're 'big' when they mean tall.  These things stick with you.  You absorb these comments into your psyche.  You become them.

The time had come for me to say "Fuck it!" and embrace my strong, capable hands...  To adorn them in girly glitter, delight in their durability - to feel the same joy as when I look down at my spectacularly sparkly pink toe nails.  I'm a magpie at heart.  Sparkly things make me happy.  I spend most of my days typing.   At the office, at home - I type.  My hands are in my peripheral vision all day long.  They should be tipped with glitter and glam!  They should make me grin.  Do I like them?  Damned straight, I do!    I'm 45 frickin' years old - it's time to grow up - to own what makes me... ME. 

David, Paladin against the APOCALYPSE

We are all just part of the Matrix folks.  We are all just cogs in a wheel… frickin’ useless, tech-reliant, cogs in the wheel of the Internet.  Come the Apocalypse, we are totally fucked. 

We were completely cut off Sunday night.  We lost all knowledge, all connection, all ability to interact with humanity.  Our modem died. 

   

We don’t have cable, ergo we don’t have cable t.v., which means we don’t have network news.  I hope that nothing important has happened over the past few of days.   Without the Internet, there is no Weather Network, no updates from CBC.ca, no reminders from my calendar on Gmail. 

There was no Netflix.

 

Our 'landline' is VOIP (Voice Over Internet Provider) "Why would we pay for phone service when we can get it for almost free?"  The only trick?  Sans working modem, you can’t call out, can’t receive calls in.  Our cell phones only work (sporadically) in the north-east corner of the living room.  You also can't get phone messages on VOIP without a modem, say like from a dental clinic receptionist, who might be trying to get ahold of you to remind you that your daughter is missing her dentist appointment, right now at 4:15 p.m. (which you would have known about, had your 3 Google reminders come through), because she can't leave a message on your 'landline' because it no longer really exists.

The first night was nothing to worry about.  It was kind of like camping.  It was the ‘Olden Days.’ We all read books.  We watched a… DVD.  It was charming, it was quaint.  We would just grab a new modem from Staples the next day after work.

Turns out?  You can’t buy a modem from Staples.  And before you deny it wholeheartedly merely out of hand... Yes, it is possible to buy one from Staples online, but you cannot go into an actual Staples and actually purchase a physical modem that you can actually take home with you.  Routers, yes.  Modems no.   

Not a problem – we’d go to the mall to The Source and get one there.  The Source does not sell modems.  "Try Bell."  Bell does indeed have modems in their store, but they will not sell you one.  Because why?  Because they want you to sign up for an Internet subscription.

“But we don’t need an Internet subscription.”

“Unless you have a Bell Internet subscription, we cannot sell you a modem.”

“Do you mean to tell me that you have actual modems, right there, in the back of your store, right now, but you will not sell me one?”

“That is correct.”

In the Tarantino film version of this moment, David then had to pull me off the Bell customer service agent when I started slamming the back of her head into the floor.

David did not want to make the trek a ½ hour away to the closest Future Shop or Best Buy just in case when we got there, they too, did not stock modems.  We went home.  We found a phone book, an actual honest-to-God paper phone book.   He called Future Shop – no modems – "You can order one online…"

“I don’t have a modem!  I can’t GET online!!”

He called Best Buy – “Yes Sir, we stock modems!  You can order a modem online and it’ll get to you in a couple of days.”

Determined not to be foiled, David started maniacally scrounging around in our various tech baskets and bins; cursing and throwing things, until finally...

“A-HA!!!”

“A-HA?!?”

He brandished a wireless Rogers Hub – which we had purchased 2 years ago, when we had been working in Toronto for a week and needed to be connected.  We had kept it active with a nominal fee... for emergencies.  The only wee little snag was that the data usage that you got with the Hub was ridiculously expensive.

He  powered up his Mac.  Shoulders back, he cracked his knuckles and turned on the Hub.  Then he surfed to every tech supply store in the western world – you know, to do a cost analysis - as fast as he possibly could, to minimize our bandwidth consumption with the Hub.  And then he ordered a new modem from Amazon.ca - out of spite.

Sprung from my loins...

Have been experiencing technical difficulties... (will explain later) posting on the fly...

Rissa gave me this card for Mother's Day...