The Naked Woman Who Didn’t Brush Her Teeth

My friend K in Austin, TX has a friend who is a Naked Woman Who Doesn’t Brush Her Teeth.

Seriously.

“So… how does that happen?” I asked K, on the phone. “Does she march in your apartment and strip? Does she always walk around sans clothing? Does her breath stink?”

I was horrified. Fascinated. Troubled. Disgusted. Intrigued.

Apparently, this woman felt like clothing and tooth-brushing were both… well, bunk… social ideas that she could live without materializing in her daily life.

This woman had eggs. Ovaries. Guts. Balls. Hutspah. Cahones. Nerve.

A lot of confidence and not a lot of modesty…

At the base of my sputter-sputter laugh-laugh reaction to K’s description was a small seed of jealousy. There are many times I wish I had the gall to state definitively that I oppose Conventional Wisdom, even Science, Propriety, and What They Say, to just strip, stink, and stew in my own juices.

My own rebellions are small.

I hate bras, for instance. Truly truly. I am aware that for some people, the lack of a bra denotes a foundational neglect of one’s personal respect, hygiene, style, adherence to custom, logic (your boobs will sag like the women in National Geographic!).

I, however, have seen my grandmother’s boobs; and, despite 80 years of stringent stringing up of the old things, they sag. I don’t even think she breastfed. Put in her in a hulu skirt and my granny is a native.

And what is the custom about, anyway? Don’t let anyone see them bounce, swing, move? Don’t let your nips show?

That reminds me of preparing for my first ballet recital as a young girl, our teacher telling us we needed to stick bandaids over our “headlights” to keep them from protruding to the audience under the hot stagelights… ballet is, of course, all about strapping and stringing up your body parts to make them aesthetically pleasing, whatever the blood from your feet speaks…

I also remember my mom’s story about when she first went to college, back in the 50s, when the school officials would watch female students to make sure they were wearing bras and girdles… not wiggling and waddling their flesh too much, you know…

Yikes!

But real life? I feel like if the boys can’t take Real Live Women, unrestrained, then the boys need to go back to training pants. What’s so scary about nipples?

I’m not only sick of this anti-breastfeeding crap in our culture, I’m sick of this “I have raging hormones and I can’t control myself because I’m a guy” schtick from the males. Learning control, and accepting the functions and shapes of the human body, these are marks of maturity, for men and women alike; grow up.

If you think my anti-bra stance is irrational, please do me a favor and go read Egalia’s Daughters, a novel that flips our gendered society on its head. Instead of women wearing bras, men have to wear ‘pehoes’ to hold in their male members; they even have a pehoe-burning in their masculinist revolt. The book is a lot of fun, but it also really makes you think again about what you believe to be true and factual with regard to gender and sex in our society.

But back to the naked woman with the dirty teeth - can you imagine?!!

What crazy anti-social thing would you do, if you felt you could get away with it?

Popular

Thanks, Cvillain, for giving us a mention!

Save Water & Money

Spreadsheet Queen shared with me how she inexpensively cut her water bill by 40%:

At Blue Ridge Eco Store, I bought:

–3 sink aerators (1.95 ish ea.)

–3 toilet poppers  (9.95ish ea.)

–2 low flow shower heads (9ish ea)

–note: already have front loading washer

Great ideas, yes?

I would also add that having a bucket to collect water while waiting for the shower to heat up and using a rain barrel together would be helpful… I just don’t have a place to store all the water I would use… ideas?

What Others Should Blog

I have a friend who should have a blog. I actually have two ideas for her: 1) a blog called Great Target Finds in Cville, because she always knows how to find cool things I never ever come across, and 2) Spreadsheet Queen, because she uses spreadsheets for everything - from deciding on a preschool to planning parties to cleaning material research - it’s so organized and interesting and useful.

I have another friend who always has interesting thoughts about “green” issues and economic disparities and buddhism and motherhood, and her blog would be widely interesting, too… Maybe she could call it The Cost of Everything. Yeah.

Yet another friend of mine should blog about how wacked Cville is - call it Crapville or C Ville Run or The Cville Critique or something… she has lived in both New Jersey and California, and her critique of some of the more asinine social mores of this little self-important town crack me up - and would be a nice counterbalance to much of the self-hype that goes on in this place.

The fun thing about blogs is they do make you think: What do I bring? What can I share? What do I rant about? What kind of perspective do I have?

Thank you

Thank you, AA; thank you, EH -

thanks for reading, and missing me when I wasn’t writing. You guys really make me feel like a million bucks.

And thank you, PIC (Partner in Crime, Husband of Mine) - thanks for reading, even though you don’t always like it. Thanks for telling me over and over what a good job I’m doing with the house and the kids. Thanks for telling me that I AM a working mother. Thanks for being my best friend.

And for insisting I use this laptop, so that I could write again.

DIY Hack

The other night I met another woman who, like me, saw a mobile and said to herself, “It can’t be THAT hard…!” and went about trying to make her own… failing miserably.

And the other day, I met a woman who, like me, approached potty training with the attitude, “It can’t be THAT hard, who needs to read a book? I’ll wing it!” only to find herself in poo hell.

I’m so glad I’m not the only one who approaches new things with this cowgirl attitude. I was beginning to think everyone else in the world studied up and prepared fully before doing everything, and that my cavalier, possibly arrogant, maybe lazy hack-it style was a flaw I was going to have to dig deep, unearth, toss.

Oh yes - but that’s the REAL reason that Into the Wild book felt so familiar - because the kid went off on his adventures with little preparation. He didn’t take a map on purpose. He wanted to follow instinct, trust himself, learn as he went, have a direct interaction with the world around him, without the interference of others at all… stupid, right? Brave? Foolish? Risky? Interesting?

Give Me Space

Do you share your towels with your roommates? With your domestic partner? With your kids?

What about your laptop?

What about your working space/home office?

I’m happy sharing the kitchen, the living room, the bed, but I have my own personal ideas of MINE.

This may, perhaps, contradict the constant mantra of SHARE! that I recite to my toddler with the religious-fever of an OCD Tibetan monk, but I can’t help it.

I need my space.

I need my territory. And my territory is my journals, my towels, my laptop, and my work space.

My husband understands the first one. But he doesn’t get the towel thing - neither did my roommates in college, junior year - they dried themselves with whatever was nearby and I took to hanging up my towels in my bedroom.

I’ve given up on this one.

The laptop is a major point of contention in our house. My laptop, bought before we moved in together, is now kind of old. It moans and hums constantly, like a refrigerator about to take flight. It’s slow. It’s now missing keys, thanks to a curious toddler obsessed with her Letters. It’s an old, toothless, overweight specimen that I can hardly use for much. Even as I type right now, I’m on the newer, lightweight laptop that my husband’s been trying to get me to use for about a year now.

The problem? This computer is his. It’s got his stuff on it, his settings, his bookmarks in the browser. And he still uses it from time to time.

His argument: Why can’t we share?

Mine: I don’t want to.

I know; I’m being ridiculous. But I can’t help it. There’s some things I don’t want to have to negotiate time for. At the library, one checks out books and returns them, takes turns at the computer stands. That’s the library. At home, I want books I can thumb, drool over, even take notes in the margins of; I want a computer I can use at 4 a.m. when I wake up and need to write. I want a Laptop of my Own.

It’s even more important, right now, than the Room of One’s Own - though that is important, too, and another thing my husband doesn’t get. I have a desk set up in “our” office that I never visit, but a workstand in the art - laundry room that I love. The difference? “Our” office is full of his stuff, the art room is filled with mine. I’m fine with that. I don’t mind not sharing. He thinks I’m anal. He thinks I’m nuts.

I know I am not, because from Virginia Woolf to the author of The Mother Trip, women artists and writers and seekers and just women of all kinds have insisted upon, repeated their claim for some space in which to be alone, to sink into the relief of having to deal with only one’s own mind heart and soul. It’s not that we don’t like collaborating with our partners and children and friends; in fact, my ideal would be that I could sit at that desk in our office and work, laugh, trade ideas, share silent space… but I would still need that other art room for my own space.

Am I nuts? I was an only child, no siblings - did I just get used to having things my way, unto myself?

Tips on: Un/Becoming a “Working” Mom…

A friend of mine is transitioning from being a full-time stay-at-home mom - yes, I despise that term, but it’s handy sometimes to use annoying, conventional terms - more on that later - and she asked me for some advice.

“What should I know? Do you have any tips?”

I’m actually quite selfishly sad that this friend is working outside the home more and more. A year ago, I was the one with the full-time job; six months ago, I quit work and she started doing some part-time hours. Now we’ve completely reversed our positions on the spectrum. We’re like two repelling magnets…

Anyway, back to the tips: Here’s some, of the top of my head, but they seem completely inadequate to me, so I’m hoping my Dear Readers (if you haven’t all abandoned me in disgust) will pipe in with some gems (as you usually do! you guys rock!) to supplement my meager offering:

1) Don’t feel guilty. This may seem obvious, but guilt is insidious; It’s an invasive species, native to parenting. It’s not a question of if you feel guilt as a parent, it’s a question of when and what will you do about it once you’ve noticed it creeping in the undergrowth.

When you go to work as a parent, whether two months after the baby is born or two years, there will come a day when your child rolls over or recites the quadratic equation or something and you will miss it and because you are working, the guilt of having not been there will wrap around the fact that you are working.

Now, if you missed Junior rolling over because you were out having coffee by yourself you would blame your need for private time; if you were washing the dishes, you’d feel guilt about being too anal with housework.

The trick is to know that this kind of guilt would come no matter what; it will latch onto whatever is around and make you think that it’s the activity/choice that’s the problem, when really, the root of this guilt is deeper. It’s about the sense of inadequacy that you, however much you love your child, cannot prevent that child from suffering, cannot totally fulfill her every need, cannot, as much as you long to, Do it All.

It is a good thing that we cannot Do it All. But our instincts, perhaps to help the species survive or something, wants us to. Enter the Guilt.

Yes, the guilt will come, and what can you do? Recognize it; acknowledge it’s presence; then forgive yourself and let it go.

As a working mother, you will be tempted to feel a lot of guilt; others may even try to slap you with it out of some deep problem of their own (probably that coworker/coparent/doodoo head in the grocery line has abandonment issues) and it’s important to get in the habit of weeding it out right away.

You are not a bad parent because you are working outside the home.

Your children will not be screwed up because you are doing so.

Believe it or not - you may not want to believe it! - your child may even flourish under the kind care of someone other than you. And the time you do spend with your children may be even more quality than it would be if you all were stuck together 24/7.

2) Build into your day 10-minute stretches of transitional time when going from work to home and home to work. When you get to work, or on your way, take a few minutes to have coffee, write in your journal, enjoy the clouds, before you dive into work mode. Before walking into the chaotic house, take a walk,have a drink at the local pub.

Yes, I said it! There’s a reason why men go to pubs after work before going home; it’s because it’s nice to have some downtime between the demands of home and work. What I don’t understand is why women just fly from one to the other, race between the two, frantically. I know - we have time constraints and responsibilities; and I’m not advocating a nightly post-work sloshing. But thinking about building in snatches of time for yourself, time to be, between the demanding and intense hours of performing and serving and meeting the needs of customers, clients, and kids will make you a better worker and a better mother and a better person. It just will.

3) Find a way to stay organized that you will use, and then use it.

4) By lots of the kinds of things in advance so you don’t have to go to the store all the time (unless that’s your time alone; then please, intentionally underprepare all you want). Pantyhose, wipes, pain medication… stock up in advance.

Okay, that’s all I can think of. Stay tuned for tips on going the other way… and please, add your two cents / two dollars / pearls of wisdom!

Perverse

Here’s how perverse I am: J somehow ended up bringing a Berenstein Bears book home from the library about the ‘bad habit’ of biting one’s nails.

Ever since reading this to her, I’ve been chewing away.

And I wonder why it’s so hard to get her to learn to pee in the potty… it’s the stubborn perversity of doing the opposite of what’s expected, to test out every rule - and then there’s the imagination that turns every potty seat into a crown or a large monocle to peer through…

I will not be bitter.

Repeat; I will not be bitter.

(I will be very bitter.)

“Mother”

I think I’ve read various op-eds over time encouraging women to proudly lay claim to the work and worth of the role of “mother.”

But not until the other day did I fully and personally experience the emotion that’s at the base of why those articles get written: There’s an emotion of guilt and shame attached to motherhood swimming around in our culture that I’ve recently picked up on - something connected to

1) the idea that women who want to have babies are biologically driven, and therefore weak, somehow not in control of their body urges = the urge to procreate is a base, shameful ‘urge’ - kind of silly and superficial -

2) having children is selfish (self-indulgent; are your genes so great? earth impact - population control)

3) not having children is also selfish (instead of giving your mother grandchildren, you’re concentrating on yourself)

4) being a mother verifies a woman’s feminity in some ways - but it also puts her in a strange category, defined often in commercials and tv shows - she has definitely taken herself out of the running to be a hottie - to be a desired object - I’m trying to put my finger on it - there’s an ambivalence around motherhood, it’s desired for women to fulfill themselves, but it’s also marks you, removes you from being competitive in the world of sex and business fully -

Not so sure, could research this more fully, am just interested that now having TWO children, I feel much more defined by them than I did just having one.