I Vant To Be Alone

I just got off the phone with the third person this week who seems incapable of helping themselves.

There's No Slowing Down...

We're watching the Grammys.
My nephew is reading Angels and Devils.
I'm online doing some electronic housekeeping.
My husband is reading the paper.

We've been invited to a wedding.
I added it to the calendar.
I checked the Registries.

then

I emailed my friend Cindy. She's blond. She grew up on Vermont. She wears LL Bean with regularity. She's up on this kind of stuff.

I just went online to Allison's wedding registry. I’m in shock. So as tacky as this is I have to ask you- do you old school wasps give cash at the wedding or is that just my Massachusetts townie Italian roots? You realize of course that I never even HEARD of open bar until college. I grew up with the $50 shower gift and a $150 check at the reception. Doug says Ally's people don’t do that.

Thoughts??? HELP!

Then I went back to the registry.
"$625 for silver service. Service for 12." I murmur, scrolling.
"Is that $625 a setting?" my husband asked.
"I think so" I replied. I scrolled down. "Yep. The gravy ladle is $300."
"There's the tablespoon...and the server...Oh, and the Vera Wang sterling picture frame..."

"That's a lot of silver" my husband noted absently.
to which my nephew, heretofore completely silent replies
"Maybe they're worried about werewolves"

We both look up.
He's still reading.

"You can melt it into bullets you know..."

On Chris Martin's Grammy Outfit...The Husband Comments:

"Unless you're a football player or in the Olympics, I don't think there's any occasion for a grown man to be wearing a belly shirt."

The Vagina Dialogues

I asked my friends "What are you calling it?"

I'm stuck. I'm not happy with "vagina". I'm not a prude, I'm not adverse to discussing it. I jut don't like the word. Like Crotch. Or Suede. Or Taupe. They are just ugly sounding words.

I had a friend who's mom was a floral designer. We used to drive around and faux marvel at shrubbery. "Ooohhh what a beautiful example of a Chlamydia bush." If we weren't in our twenties, she would have smacked us.

I had two relatively normal friends come out and say "We're calling it a vagina. We just don't have a problem with it."

Neither do I, I mean. Except for you know, when I was a kid and the kids who called it a vagina were named Reuben, got their asses kicked and were overly precocious in the way that adults say they like but later mock to other adults.

"There's something WRONG with it" I said to my mother in law on the phone. "What did you call it?” “Well” she said “It never really came up. I had two boys remember and they were years apart. I said vagina but I'm sure Douglas might have taught his brother another name for it.”

I honestly can't remember what we said growing up. My mother was pretty frank about sex, about body parts, about keeping it clean "down there" and also not ever ever ever letting a strange man touch you. So we were all clear. Now I call it a cho'cha. My stepsister introduced me to the phrase about 25 years ago and it's never bothered me.

My friend Carla calls it a Mickey Rooney. She has no idea why. It was something her mother used to say. Although, this IS the same girl who squealed "Burberry!" in London whereupon my other girlfriend craned her neck screaming "WHERE’S Bill Murray???" so it could just be a Boston accent thing.

"Why wouldn't you just uses its proper name?" my girlfriend queried "That is what it is."

I know, I know. Sigh.

But here's the thing. TONS of things have proper names but we don't use them. And it's not out of prudishness or an inability to. They just don't SOUND right.

"I'm sorry. I'm just in a bad mood. I think I'm commencing my menstrual cycle."

"We really should have intercourse more often."

"Call me on my mobile phone at my business establishment and we'll arrange a mutually convenient time to masticate together."

I just don't want to be standing in the kitchen next year and have her walk in crying.

"What's the MATTER honey, are you ok??"

sniff sniff baby voice cry "I hurt...I hurt my vagina falling off my bike."

"Oh no honey, actually you hurt your pubis bone. It's looks like you banged your tibia up pretty bad as well."