Chuckle #439 | January 26th, 2011
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I’ve never been a big fan of astrology, mostly because I've suffered through too many wince-worthy Scorpio pick-up lines. So the shocking news that my “sign” might have changed did not freak me out like it did some people.
It did get me thinking though.
I am (or was) a Gemini, the “bipolar charmer" of the astrology world. And I was fine with that. Gemini has fit like a glove for the past 46 years. Now what? How much of my personality is natural? How much of it developed simply because I thought I was a Gemini?
I have to ask because, as a Gemini, I am naturally inquisitive.
Under the “new” (and some say fraudulent) zodiac, I become a Taurus. Taurus is dependable, patient and loyal (AKA boring) whereas Gemini is fun, witty and devious. That’s a big change to contemplate.
What really worries me is that my husband is also a Taurus, but he’s for real. His sign did not change. His world was not turned upside down. And to top it all off, in researching this column I’ve learned that a Gemini shouldn’t marry a Taurus. Apparently “earth” and “air” are not especially compatible.
This came as quite a surprise to me.
You see, I’ve always believed that my husband and I were perfect together. I’m flighty, he’s steady. I flirt, he ignores. I flit, he sticks. He sooths my restless nature like cream in my coffee. Without his influence I’d surely be living with my 5th husband in a second hand tent camper.
I don’t know what those “so called” experts are talking about. As far as I’m concerned, Gemini+Taurus is a match made in heaven.
But what if we really are both Taurus? There goes our social life. We’ll be the very nice but dull couple that everyone tries to avoid. Luckily the change didn’t go the other way. A Gemini+Gemini combo would have been even worse. Picture a never-ending, exhausting foursome.
I’m finding this whole Tropical vs. Sidereal thing quite confusing. Or as my husband might say, it’s all bull. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
Who am I, really? Am I outgoing or subdued? Superficial or dependable? For sanity sake I’m going to ignore this little intellectual catfight between astronomy and astrology and stick with what I know is true and good in my life, and that means sticking with my husband.
The bottom line is that I am very happy.
So if my husband can continue to put up with my “superficiality”, I can certainly tolerate his “self-indulgence”. A good match is more than just a sign in the sky or the tilt of a planet’s axis; it’s a feeling in the heart.
And for those of you who find yourself sporting the “new” sign, Ophiuchus! I’m sorry, you are officially ophiuched. Note the similarity in pronunciation to a terribly inappropriate expletive. Repeatedly shouting that into someone’s ear at a noisy bar will definitely get you into trouble.
New Ophiuchus might just want to claim ignorance the next time they get asked “What’s your sign?” Nothing good can come of it.
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Copyright 2008-2011, LOLmom.com, Greenwich CT, all rights reserved
Could the "Times" I Spend in Bed be Better Spent?
Chuckle #438 | January 19th, 2011
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My favorite thing to do on Sunday morning is to have coffee in bed while reading the New York Times. Pure self-indulgence always makes me feel like I’m 25 again – back when the most difficult task of my day was to figure out where to have brunch. Ah, youth…
But lately my Sunday ritual has become a little too intellectually challenging. I blame The Times of course, since it couldn’t possibly be me.
Here’s the thing. The articles in The Times have gotten too long; they are hard to decipher and even harder to finish. The Times is the serpent in my Garden of Eden. It offers knowledge, but only after it makes me eat a dozen rotten apples. That's intellectual hazing.
I know The Times is sacred, but someone needs to remind certain revered journalists that they are not penning War & Peace. Someone needs to point out that these precious “oeuvres” will be recycled precisely two hours after they are skimmed and barely understood by yours truly.
I’m not proud that I have a hard time wading through a weighty two page spread on Darfur. It’s not that don’t care about Darfur. I’ve simply succumbed to intellectual fatigue brought on by age and a really, really comfy bed. If it weren’t for those convenient blurbs on page two I’d have very little idea of what was going on in the world.
You’d think that Sunday would be the perfect time to get myself up to speed on chaos in Africa. But it’s not. Think about it, I’m lying in my cozy bed with my home-foamed latte at my fingertips and my heated mattress pad turned up to “high.” My environment makes it hard to focus.
I can’t deny that under the twin influences of age and warmth, the mind will wander.
Don’t get me wrong, The Times is a great publication. Why else would I capitalize “The”? The writers are top-notch…real deep thinkers who, more often than not, have too much to say. Their mission? To single handedly reduce the number of idiots in America using nothing but the quill in their hand and power of the written word.
I find this to be an admirable (and possibly futile) goal. But might I suggest that sometimes less is more?
Lucky for me the Sunday Times has some lighter sections that don’t require much thought at all: Metro; Real Estate; the Target insert.
Call me intellectually lame and/or apathetic, but hey, this is the age of EMAIL, and the New York Times should make some adjustments, however small. The Times needs to remember that it is not an academic journal; it is a newspaper (that happens to lean to the left.) And as such it has a responsibility to shorten up the treatises it calls “articles” and save some trees.
Don’t misunderstand. I’m still a greedy quasi intellectual. I still want thought provoking analysis and depth, but I want the Cliff note equivalent.
Or maybe I should just appreciate The Times for what it is, one of the few papers “left”, and save the more challenging articles for a day when I’m NOT lying in bed trying to remember what it was like being 25.
On second thought, perhaps I shouldn’t blame this ALL on The Times…
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Get the Weekly Chuckle via email at http://www.laughoutloudmom.com/
Copyright 2008-2011, LOLmom.com, Greenwich CT, all rights reserved
scroll down to leave a comment
My favorite thing to do on Sunday morning is to have coffee in bed while reading the New York Times. Pure self-indulgence always makes me feel like I’m 25 again – back when the most difficult task of my day was to figure out where to have brunch. Ah, youth…
But lately my Sunday ritual has become a little too intellectually challenging. I blame The Times of course, since it couldn’t possibly be me.
Here’s the thing. The articles in The Times have gotten too long; they are hard to decipher and even harder to finish. The Times is the serpent in my Garden of Eden. It offers knowledge, but only after it makes me eat a dozen rotten apples. That's intellectual hazing.
I know The Times is sacred, but someone needs to remind certain revered journalists that they are not penning War & Peace. Someone needs to point out that these precious “oeuvres” will be recycled precisely two hours after they are skimmed and barely understood by yours truly.
I’m not proud that I have a hard time wading through a weighty two page spread on Darfur. It’s not that don’t care about Darfur. I’ve simply succumbed to intellectual fatigue brought on by age and a really, really comfy bed. If it weren’t for those convenient blurbs on page two I’d have very little idea of what was going on in the world.
You’d think that Sunday would be the perfect time to get myself up to speed on chaos in Africa. But it’s not. Think about it, I’m lying in my cozy bed with my home-foamed latte at my fingertips and my heated mattress pad turned up to “high.” My environment makes it hard to focus.
I can’t deny that under the twin influences of age and warmth, the mind will wander.
Don’t get me wrong, The Times is a great publication. Why else would I capitalize “The”? The writers are top-notch…real deep thinkers who, more often than not, have too much to say. Their mission? To single handedly reduce the number of idiots in America using nothing but the quill in their hand and power of the written word.
I find this to be an admirable (and possibly futile) goal. But might I suggest that sometimes less is more?
Lucky for me the Sunday Times has some lighter sections that don’t require much thought at all: Metro; Real Estate; the Target insert.
Call me intellectually lame and/or apathetic, but hey, this is the age of EMAIL, and the New York Times should make some adjustments, however small. The Times needs to remember that it is not an academic journal; it is a newspaper (that happens to lean to the left.) And as such it has a responsibility to shorten up the treatises it calls “articles” and save some trees.
Don’t misunderstand. I’m still a greedy quasi intellectual. I still want thought provoking analysis and depth, but I want the Cliff note equivalent.
Or maybe I should just appreciate The Times for what it is, one of the few papers “left”, and save the more challenging articles for a day when I’m NOT lying in bed trying to remember what it was like being 25.
On second thought, perhaps I shouldn’t blame this ALL on The Times…
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Get the Weekly Chuckle via email at http://www.laughoutloudmom.com/
Copyright 2008-2011, LOLmom.com, Greenwich CT, all rights reserved
Could a Constitutional Amendment Save Christmas?
Chuckle #437 | January 12th, 2011
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I don’t care if you just gave birth to triplets or had your knee replaced, un-decorating the house after Christmas is still your job, simply because you are “woman”. (Don’t bother roaring.) And don’t waste your breath asking your family for help because you won’t get any. There is no such thing as equal rights when it comes to taking down the Christmas decorations.
And the sad thing is that we women have only ourselves to blame.
Do really think it was Cro-Magnon guy who brought the first pine branch into the cave and said, “Ooh, honey this smells good, let’s do this every year?” Nope, it was one of us gals, in what may arguably be the greatest gender betrayal of our evolution.
Think about it. When was the last time your husband came home all excited about the cute new ornament he bought? The correct answer is NEVER. So while I bitterly complain that my kids and husband are uncooperative (understatement intended), I take full responsibility for their un-decorating inertia.
You see, with 12 large boxes of holiday “stuff” to be packed-up, it’s no surprise that helping mom lacks the appeal of say, a two hour Facebook chat.
Sure we ladies get a little help BEFORE Christmas when the kids’ anticipation and excitement is at Kilimanjaro heights. Christmas is by far the biggest carrot out there. But after the Epiphany all we’ve got left is “stick” and anyone in the family who couldn’t get into the witness protection program has gone AWOL.
If I waited for my kids to help me put away the Christmas stuff, the bells and bows would stay up all year.
While my husband doesn’t necessarily help “un” decorate either, he will dutifully haul the 12 boxes back up into the attic after having just schlepped them down 4 weeks earlier. You might think this makes him a good guy. In reality he’s simply afraid to let me up into the attic in case I freak out upon seeing the stuff he’s shoved up there over the past 15 years.
Equal rights issues and hidden agendas aside, I have to give my sweet Jewish mate credit for his willingness to climb the rickety pull-down ladder year after year. I would make him a saint if I could, but as a woman I don’t have much pull with the Vatican.
To be honest, I don’t feel the need to go all Gloria Steinem about “un-decorating unfairness”. I totally buy into the idea that I am from Venus and that my husband is from Mars. You could call us “separate but equal”. My husband drinks scotch and does the heavy lifting while I carefully wrap and put the ornaments away. Weirdly enough, we’re both happy.
I can’t change the world order, genetics, or the nature of man. I “can’t stop Christmas from coming” (nor do I want to). And just between you and me, I don’t expect the Equal Rights Amendment to ever pass, in any form. But in a post Epiphany epiphany, I realized that there is one thing I can change in hopes of getting more help from the kids.
I can get rid of some unnecessary holiday “stuff”. If there’s less to put away, my kids might become more enthusiastic about lending a hand.
So this year I managed to get my 12 boxes down to 11; a small step in the right direction.
Next year I’ll try for 10.
If that fails, I have only two options left. Leave the holiday stuff up all year, or get a bigger stick.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Copyright 2008-2011, LOLmom.com, Greenwich CT, USA
scroll down to leave a comment
I don’t care if you just gave birth to triplets or had your knee replaced, un-decorating the house after Christmas is still your job, simply because you are “woman”. (Don’t bother roaring.) And don’t waste your breath asking your family for help because you won’t get any. There is no such thing as equal rights when it comes to taking down the Christmas decorations.
And the sad thing is that we women have only ourselves to blame.
Do really think it was Cro-Magnon guy who brought the first pine branch into the cave and said, “Ooh, honey this smells good, let’s do this every year?” Nope, it was one of us gals, in what may arguably be the greatest gender betrayal of our evolution.
Think about it. When was the last time your husband came home all excited about the cute new ornament he bought? The correct answer is NEVER. So while I bitterly complain that my kids and husband are uncooperative (understatement intended), I take full responsibility for their un-decorating inertia.
You see, with 12 large boxes of holiday “stuff” to be packed-up, it’s no surprise that helping mom lacks the appeal of say, a two hour Facebook chat.
Sure we ladies get a little help BEFORE Christmas when the kids’ anticipation and excitement is at Kilimanjaro heights. Christmas is by far the biggest carrot out there. But after the Epiphany all we’ve got left is “stick” and anyone in the family who couldn’t get into the witness protection program has gone AWOL.
If I waited for my kids to help me put away the Christmas stuff, the bells and bows would stay up all year.
While my husband doesn’t necessarily help “un” decorate either, he will dutifully haul the 12 boxes back up into the attic after having just schlepped them down 4 weeks earlier. You might think this makes him a good guy. In reality he’s simply afraid to let me up into the attic in case I freak out upon seeing the stuff he’s shoved up there over the past 15 years.
Equal rights issues and hidden agendas aside, I have to give my sweet Jewish mate credit for his willingness to climb the rickety pull-down ladder year after year. I would make him a saint if I could, but as a woman I don’t have much pull with the Vatican.
To be honest, I don’t feel the need to go all Gloria Steinem about “un-decorating unfairness”. I totally buy into the idea that I am from Venus and that my husband is from Mars. You could call us “separate but equal”. My husband drinks scotch and does the heavy lifting while I carefully wrap and put the ornaments away. Weirdly enough, we’re both happy.
I can’t change the world order, genetics, or the nature of man. I “can’t stop Christmas from coming” (nor do I want to). And just between you and me, I don’t expect the Equal Rights Amendment to ever pass, in any form. But in a post Epiphany epiphany, I realized that there is one thing I can change in hopes of getting more help from the kids.
I can get rid of some unnecessary holiday “stuff”. If there’s less to put away, my kids might become more enthusiastic about lending a hand.
So this year I managed to get my 12 boxes down to 11; a small step in the right direction.
Next year I’ll try for 10.
If that fails, I have only two options left. Leave the holiday stuff up all year, or get a bigger stick.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Get your Weekly Chuckle via email! Sign-up at http://www.laughoutloudmom.com/
Copyright 2008-2011, LOLmom.com, Greenwich CT, USA
The Folly of Chasing the Hair of the Dog
Chuckle #436 | January 5th, 2011
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I’ve learned several really important things during my lifetime. One is that “chasing the hair of the dog” is in fact a myth perpetuated by drunken Englishmen. Another is that there is a definite “point of no return” when plucking eyebrows. Once you tweeze past that point, an already bad situation will only get much, much worse.
Given that my tweezers are the second thing I reach for when I’m all liquored-up and bored, I get to do a lot of eyebrow reconstruction. I can now repair some pretty ugly “plucking” faux pas including “Perplexed Picasso”, “Angry Manga”, and “the Marlene Dietrich”. All it takes is a steady hand and well sharpened eyebrow pencil - which can be elusive given that an extra drink probably caused the problem in the first place.
I think women over-tweeze because we are always seeking perfection.
I suppose it IS possible that we are all just one hair away from revealing the supermodel within. But it is more likely that God intended us to develop this aggravating layer of fur later in life and that by willy nilly plucking it out we are messing with his/her grand design. (My apologies to Mr. Hawking.)
No worries though. If the mistake can’t be fixed, the hair will eventually grow back.
But that is exactly the problem, hair grows. And as I enter my late forties, this “hair” is becoming more and more of an issue.
They say men become increasingly hirsute as they age, virtual teddy bears. Women get hairy in a more disturbingly random way. Let’s just say that eyebrows are the least of my “stray hair” worries.
I’m always in pursuit of that mysterious extra-long chin hair. Where does it come from, what is it’s purpose? And what’s with those wiry black witch hairs that seem to spring up overnight? Certain tender body parts are glamorously glabrous no more. Maybe it’s time to talk full body wax job.
Of course all this talk of “new” hair is an undeniably clever way for me to segue into the topic of the “new” year and my “New” Year’s resolutions. Or so I’d like to think.
So stash your tweezers, put down your drink, and ready yourself for what I’ve got planned for 2011…Drum roll please…
1) I resolve to NEVER buy the 8 pound platter of Baklava from Costco ever again. (No one likes Baklava that much, which is why normal stores sell it only in tiny packages.) If I come to your house bearing Baklava, you’ll know why.
2) I resolve to find and use-up all those partially redeemed gift cards that are lying around the house like plastic pirate treasure, no matter who’s they are. I hereby lay claim to them.
3) I resolve to finally use or throw out all the weird stuff I’ve been shoving into the back of my pantry. (Even the freeze dried Persian food and the Falafel mix, both of which seemed like such a good idea 3 years ago.)
4) And finally, I resolve to spend less time conducting “search and destroy” follicle missions so that I can spend more quality time with my loving family. I’m pretty sure they’ll accept me as I am; crazy witch hairs and all.
But just in case my hirsute-self grosses them out, I won’t get rid of the tweezers quite yet. I’m still waiting for that freakishly long chin hair to make its 2011 debut. When it does I’ll be ready and waiting…
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Copyright 2008-2011, LOLmom.com, Greenwich CT, USA
scroll down to leave a comment
I’ve learned several really important things during my lifetime. One is that “chasing the hair of the dog” is in fact a myth perpetuated by drunken Englishmen. Another is that there is a definite “point of no return” when plucking eyebrows. Once you tweeze past that point, an already bad situation will only get much, much worse.
Given that my tweezers are the second thing I reach for when I’m all liquored-up and bored, I get to do a lot of eyebrow reconstruction. I can now repair some pretty ugly “plucking” faux pas including “Perplexed Picasso”, “Angry Manga”, and “the Marlene Dietrich”. All it takes is a steady hand and well sharpened eyebrow pencil - which can be elusive given that an extra drink probably caused the problem in the first place.
I think women over-tweeze because we are always seeking perfection.
I suppose it IS possible that we are all just one hair away from revealing the supermodel within. But it is more likely that God intended us to develop this aggravating layer of fur later in life and that by willy nilly plucking it out we are messing with his/her grand design. (My apologies to Mr. Hawking.)
No worries though. If the mistake can’t be fixed, the hair will eventually grow back.
But that is exactly the problem, hair grows. And as I enter my late forties, this “hair” is becoming more and more of an issue.
They say men become increasingly hirsute as they age, virtual teddy bears. Women get hairy in a more disturbingly random way. Let’s just say that eyebrows are the least of my “stray hair” worries.
I’m always in pursuit of that mysterious extra-long chin hair. Where does it come from, what is it’s purpose? And what’s with those wiry black witch hairs that seem to spring up overnight? Certain tender body parts are glamorously glabrous no more. Maybe it’s time to talk full body wax job.
Of course all this talk of “new” hair is an undeniably clever way for me to segue into the topic of the “new” year and my “New” Year’s resolutions. Or so I’d like to think.
So stash your tweezers, put down your drink, and ready yourself for what I’ve got planned for 2011…Drum roll please…
1) I resolve to NEVER buy the 8 pound platter of Baklava from Costco ever again. (No one likes Baklava that much, which is why normal stores sell it only in tiny packages.) If I come to your house bearing Baklava, you’ll know why.
2) I resolve to find and use-up all those partially redeemed gift cards that are lying around the house like plastic pirate treasure, no matter who’s they are. I hereby lay claim to them.
3) I resolve to finally use or throw out all the weird stuff I’ve been shoving into the back of my pantry. (Even the freeze dried Persian food and the Falafel mix, both of which seemed like such a good idea 3 years ago.)
4) And finally, I resolve to spend less time conducting “search and destroy” follicle missions so that I can spend more quality time with my loving family. I’m pretty sure they’ll accept me as I am; crazy witch hairs and all.
But just in case my hirsute-self grosses them out, I won’t get rid of the tweezers quite yet. I’m still waiting for that freakishly long chin hair to make its 2011 debut. When it does I’ll be ready and waiting…
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Copyright 2008-2011, LOLmom.com, Greenwich CT, USA
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