203 Days - Back to Work: The Often Underestimated Role of The Suit

Just over two months ago I unexpectedly found myself without the thing I hadn’t been without since I was fifteen years young… a job. After nine years with a company the time had come to part ways and so I counted my pennies, counted my blessings, held my nose, and jumped into the somewhat dingy and fairly deep pool of stay-at-home-motherhood, at least for a little while. But if you know me you know and if you don’t then let me school you with another uninteresting bit of useless Eve-formation: I’ve never been a big fan of the water.

Work and the working world is a huge part of who I am. My mother never not worked. She’s on the Eve of Seventy and still gets up at 3:30 am every day, has her breakfast, makes her coffee, and sets out for the charter school in Philadelphia where she works in their kitchen. My mother is a lunch lady and when she’s not a lunch lady any longer she’ll be a cashier or an order taker or a clerk of some sort because she’ll never, ever not work; a characteristic I have inherited from her to both my benefit (in my mind) and my detriment (in the minds of others). I’ve been criticized in the past for stating that I get fulfillment from a job that is different from the fulfillment I get from being a mother or a wife, but what some may not understand is that it’s the sole portion of my pie-compared life that doesn’t directly relate to others, which is why I am so attached to it. In other words, for the most part, work is all about me and what I’m capable of and what I’m doing and what I can learn and how I adapt and what problems I solve and how I solve them and how I am rewarded through pay and bonuses and criticism and praise. The pressure of ruining someone’s young life because I didn’t handle a situation properly is off the table – saved for the motherhood portion. The potential to hurt the person who loves me more than anyone else isn’t an option – that’s for the spouse portion. If I fuck up in the career portion then I fuck myself up and only myself up and so not doing so allows me to both admire and respect ME so that I may be able to nurture properly the other equally important portions of my pie. If I can like me I can like you, see how that works? And I want to like you… I really do want to like you.

Which brings me to my weapon of choice as it pertains to the things I need to be a successful super heroine in the working world: The Suit.

Where would Clark Kent be without his suit under his… well, suit? And what on earth would Morgan Freeman get excited about in The Dark Knight? In a country with so many sweatpants, fanny packs, and hoodies embellishing the backs, limbs, and asses of its citizens, it is The Suit that still stands as a symbol of power for a financially stable world, and for me and quite possibly a handful of others, below are a few overly exaggerated and somewhat dramatic reasons why.

I won’t just wear any suit. My suits are selected with care and while I’m not purchasing them from Neiman Marcus I am usually buying something with a designer name delicately stitched to the inside of the collar which gives me the whimsical feeling of that person’s hand on the back of my neck, telling me that they’re honored that I would select them above all the others. If pants accompany the suit they should fit my hips in a way that wouldn’t allow for any overflow of my twice-labored, motherly body and the pants should be long and lean on my hard running legs; enough for the cuff to fall about midway on my high heels which I am never without in Suitville, or even Dressburg. A skirt should fit tastefully snug to my derrière and its hem should come just above my knee or a little higher, depending on the season and the city in which it’s worn. And the jacket… oh, my favorite part… the jacket. It should firstly show off my shoulders – the very same ones that friends have cried long and hard upon; that men have both gently kissed and roughly bitten, and on which the world itself has rested when it was weary – they are broad, these shoulders, and have always been two of my most noticeable characteristics. The jacket should coat my arms in a way that shows their strength. It should be fitted but not overly strained so that their flex can be seen when an unexpected foe approaches, but also so that the important work that my arms need to do – such as hugging my children goodbye in the morning – is still possible. In the middle it should grab my waist as firmly as a lover, showing both a forty-year-old feminine figure and the care I’ve taken to keep that figure fit, and where it buttons in the front, the jacket should adhere perfectly to my bosom with no pulling, and no gaps. But most importantly, MOST importantly, The Suit should live on me. It should become part of who I am when I’m in it; reflecting my personality and my passion for the job at hand. It should laugh when I laugh and set the scene for the stories I’m to tell, and above all else, it should protect me when I need it to – from rejection, from denial, and from the word the suit loathes most… “no.”

This coming Monday, The Suit and I will again become one as I step back into the world of The Working Mother. It truly has been a wonderful two months getting to know my way around a Whole Foods, the yarn store, and my local hipster-employed coffee shop, but, it’s time for me to be a big girl once more. My bag is packed. My trip is booked. My shoes are polished and my suit… well, let’s just say…

It’s waiting.

206 Days - The Little Brown-Skinned Girl in My Marriage

In my mind I’ve named her “Shey.”

I’m sad to say that I’m unsure of Shey’s ethnic background. If I had to take a guess I would probably say that she’s Hispanic. Though, she could be Italian. Or Indian. Or even a light skinned African-American. It doesn’t matter, really, other than to set the scene for what Shey’s role in my life has been over the last several months. I want you to know Shey the way that I know Shey and embrace her as I have no matter her race, creed, or political preference. Shey should be treated the way all people deserve to be treated; plastic or not. 

Several months ago a little brown-skinned figurine of a school-aged girl showed up in my two-year-old daughter’s backpack. It was a Friday afternoon and I was muddling through my end-of-the-week chore of emptying out the kids’ schoolbags when I stumbled with a giggle upon my soon-to-be Shey.

“Bebe… where did you get this little girl?”

“I got her in my pakpak, Mommy.”

“No baby, I know she’s in your backpack, but where did she come from?”

“My pakpak. She come from my Dora pakpak with Dora on it.”

“No, I know, Bea, but whe… ugh, never mind...” I sighed with an air of “aw, fuck it” in my tone, and welcomed future Shey to our humble abode with her very own living space right next to Strawberry Shortcake. Never did I expect to see the likes of Shey again because for the most part if it’s smaller than four inches, lives in our house and doesn’t crawl, it’s got about as good a chance of disappearing as the future wife of a guy with the last name of Peterson. But not this little Indihispanitalian black girl… not Shey. She was here for the greater good, once again proving that it isn’t what a person says, but rather what a person does that shows the world, or better yet, those they care about, what matters most in life.

2012 has been… hmm, how can I put this so that it still sounds eloquent while giving the impact of the severity of what I’m trying to say? Ah! Got it… 2012 has been FUCKED. THE FUCK. UP. It’s been a bastard of a year professionally (present situation excluded) and a g*ddamned jackass of a year personally. I don’t even know how it’s been health-wise since I’m way too freaked out to visit a doctor because I just know he’s going to tell me I’ve got polio or Tourette’s or some shit. Needless to say, I got an early-bird discount on noisemakers, party hats, and confetti, and may just start ringing 2013 in by the end of November. But through most of this shitty year, my husband and I have managed to make it without killing one another, killing anyone else, or, as Shey was about to prove, killing our senses of humor. 

“Babe, can you get me some Ibuprofen?” my husband yelled into the bathroom one weekday evening after an especially rough night with the kids. “Yep. Two or three?” I asked as I reached for the door of the medicine cabinet. “Nine,” he exclaimed, which I knew meant he needed three. “And why wouldn’t he need three when Beatrice crapped her pants an hour earlier after twenty-five straight minutes of reading to her while she sat on the potty?” I thought. “Hell, why wouldn’t he need nine? Why wouldn’t he need a valium chaser? God knows I would do...” But those thoughts were interrupted by the roars of my own laughter as I saw little Shey staring at me from a tiny space between the toothpaste and Bea’s pink-eye medication.

“What’s so funny?” Todd asked from the other room but I knew that he knew why I was laughing and so I played the game the way it was intended.

“Nothing. Nothing. Just thinking about that Daily Show skit. Jason Jones kills me. I hope he never leaves,” I replied as I slipped Shey into my pocket and walked out with three Ibuprofen, thinking about where to place Shey next.

Years ago, when we first moved in together, Todd and I would play this exact same game only with a little wooden “H” about an inch big. I would put it in one of his dress socks in the back of his drawer. He would stick it in a yet-to-be-opened bar of bath soap. I would slip it in between the pages of his Utne Reader magazine. He would hide it in my summer shade pressed powder compact. The rule was to put it somewhere that wasn’t ridiculously obvious so that the person would find it eventually, but also somewhere so that enough time would pass that they would forget about it for awhile. The second rule was that you could never tell the other person when you found it – they would know that you did ONLY when they found it back, themselves. The objective? Well, that’s the best part, and it’s the part that makes me tear up when I think about my awesome new friend, Shey. The objective was to prove that words weren’t always needed and that actions –even simple ones—could speak louder than any email, telephone call, social media post, or even, sometimes, face-to-face conversation. That doing was worth more than saying, because often in a marriage or in a partnership or any relationship you find yourselves being the politicians of your own lives. You talk such a good game because you believe it when you say it, and because you want the others in your life to believe it, too. And while your intentions are always best when they’re said, your legacy is determined by what you did or didn’t do in the end. It’s a simple, simple rule that is too often forgotten in the land, in the law, and in love.

The little wooden H game went on for a while until we decided to have kids and move to a bigger house. It was lost in the move, never to be found again, along with a fair amount of other things that were lost once the kids came along. That’s not an uncommon tale among those strong enough to know what it’s like to be married with children. The uncommon tale would be to hear that what was lost was not necessarily found, but rather, replaced by something bigger, and better, and brighter, and more meaningful.

Enter, one very small brown-skinned girl with pigtails of plastic and a shirt the color of sunlight, currently hiding in a place that my husband will find probably within the next week or two when it’s time to pay the bills. And when he does, I hope he smiles, but even more so, I hope he knows - because I showed him - that a life without him in it would be dull and meaningless, and worst of all, Sheyless. 

210 Days - The Ten Year Itch: When a Potential Forever Is Interrupted By Predictability

Nothing endures but change ~ Heraclitus

Who knew that a Greek man born in 535 BC would utter the one statement that would define my entire existence over 2,500 years later? Although, he does have the word “clit” in his name, and, well, that little morsel of a body part has definitely played a role in some of my life’s more stupid decisions, so, I guess it’s not so odd after all.

Ten years ago I found myself in a somewhat similar situation that I find myself in on this very day – I was twenty-nine at the time, recently divorced, in a new relationship with a man that lived 800 miles away from me, worked at a night club and lived with my parents. Actually, that is nothing like the life I’m living right now, well, those parts aren’t, but this part is: I was in the midst of some severe life changes brought on purposely by yours truly as I believed it was the best way to start a new decade. My thirties, I vowed, would be different from my twenties. I moved to a new city, I started a new job, I bedded a new man, and I worked towards a new body. And ten years prior to even THAT, I did the same goddamned thing. Months before turning twenty I had broken up with my then boyfriend from high school, lived completely on my own for the first time in my life, shaved my head bald, and started dating (fucking) – heavily, which brings me back to where I am today. With just seven short months until I get to add a “4” to the front of my age for the first time, I once again have started purging myself of the things that made up my thirties in search of change and difference in my forties. A new position at a new company starts next week. I’ve started questioning if Atlanta is where I want to live for the next ten years. And my world with my significant other has even gotten a bit sticky (largely because of sheer idiocy on my part) as of late. Pattern? Ya think? But the real question is… why?

Back before my 39^th birthday I wrote a post that summed up a lot about my personality. In a nutshell it goes on about my tendency to self-sabotage and my predictability when it comes to it, and I’m sure a therapist would go on about how it has to do with my inability to just let things happen organically, and about how not being in control of every situation makes me nervous and I react accordingly. But they may also delve deeper into what I believe is the root of my problems: my obsession with having to change.

There are things I fear more than others in my life, but probably the greatest of all these fears is being ordinary. Living in the mundane makes me excruciatingly unhappy. Suffering through the patterns of consistency and routine eat away at my soul like a piranha on a duck carcass. Not being, or worse, not feeling different from those around me gives me a sense of uncomfortability in my own skin and yet it seems I can go ten years before that fear ventures back to the surface. For some reason my mind is able to compartmentalize that emotion until the combination lock is opened right before the turns of my decades which is when I usually make my most drastic changes, for better, or for worse. And here I am again, forcing change instead of allowing change; making my future instead of welcoming what it could have been, and wondering once more how I should, could, or will do things differently ten years from now.

Being effed up in the head isn’t an easy job, let me tell you. It takes a certain skill and loads of character to be able to do it properly. And sabotaging your own life, well, I could be a downright mentor when it comes to that little gift, but if you’re anything like I am, know this: whatever happens in the end was supposed to happen in the beginning, so try your damndest to remember that when you’re crying alone in your darkened bedroom while Tori Amos plays softly from your IPod speakers because yes, you are the creator of your own destiny, and yes, you can change your future, but honestly, you don’t always have to, or need to, or should.

And one final quote from Mr. Hit-a-clitoris or whatever his name is:

The road up and the road down is one and the same.

So travel it, and travel it far, but know when it’s time to stop and rest, and know mostly when you’ve gone far enough.

218 Days - Life Outside the Bunco Circle: A Working Mom’s Choice between Being In and Being True

Making friends in Atlanta has been, well… difficult, but mostly because I don’t really try. I’m a Northerner, see, and while Atlanta is a city of transplants it does have a way of quickly Southernizing people once they move here. But not me. I still expect to smell gravy (spaghetti sauce) cooking on Sunday morning when I stroll down the block and still believe that I can waltz in to my next-door neighbor’s house by opening the door and yelling “It’s Barbara. Is coffee on?” Neither of those things ever happens, though, and while it saddens me, I don’t really worry about it, because there is more to life than fitting in where you are, there is being true to who you are, and that’s what I’m doing every day that I wake up.  

I had no idea what Bunco was, how to play it, or why it was supposed to be the best thing on earth since a singing Hugh Jackman. What I knew of it, and all that I knew of it, was that it was played by middle-aged women in the ‘burbs with a passion for drinking, Zumba classes, and the occasional Botox injection (or so they said), so imagine my surprise when a group of gals in my inner-city, mostly Democratic, pseudo tree-hugging neighborhood decided to form a Bunco group and invited a bunch of us to join. Never being one to turn down an excuse to drink, I gave the idea some serious thought. “Could it be… that I could maybe make actual… friends here? I won’t know what to do with myself! Do I bring something? Should I bake something? Would the suburb women bake? Or would they buy? I should buy. People might get the wrong impression if I baked. Or would they think I was showing off if I bought?” This display of idiocy and ridiculousness went on in my mind for minutes at least, until I had gathered up the courage to respond to the invitation.

“Yes. I accept. Put me down for a night of revelry and drunken camaraderie, Bunco-style! Because of work I will only be able to attend occasionally, but what the hell, let’s do it anyway!” I nerdingly exclaimed before I clicked send.

I then sat back with my arms folded across my chest and thought, “I’m so proud of me. I can do this! I am on my way to friendships. I knew this was the right decision” before heading downstairs to pick out my clothes for work for the following morning, take my nighttime shower, and put myself to bed while visions of dice, cheap wine, and high-pitched laughter danced in my head.

Poor naïve, friendless, working-mom me. So innocent. So… out of the loop. I closed my smiling eyes never seeing the truth for what it was. Never bothering to read up on this Wisteria Lane-esque phenomenon that was sweeping the nation and had been for years. You see, for those who don’t know (and believe me, there are still people like me out there that don’t), Bunco isn’t some fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants-I’ll-show-up-occasionally-with-tequila gathering of middle-aged women and mothers. It’s a marriage… a commitment. And if you can’t commit to one night a month with your house (no matter what the size or how many kids occupy it) playing host when your turn is up, then sista, you can roll your Bunco die around some other Peyton Place, ‘cause it ain’t rollin’ ‘round these parts… no way, no how.

In so many words I received a response a few days later that politely but firmly explained the following as it pertained to said Bunco group: “You’re either in, or you’re out.” And knowing that my job – one that took me away from my house, husband, and family for eleven-and-a-half hours a day, five days a week – would not allow me to commit to something as serious as a dice game (irony alert), I made a choice that I wondered if I would regret down the road. I hit reply, put my non-manicured fingertips on the dust-reddened keys of my non-MAC laptop and typed three words:

“Then I’m out.”

And clicked “send” before I had the chance to change my mind.

I wrote that email years ago and to be honest, I haven’t looked back. What my Bunco experience taught me was that I didn’t need friends just to have friends. I need, my job. I need, my husband. I need the house I live in, small or not, and fancy or not. And I need to like who I am even if other women don’t. Don’t get me wrong – I have friends, they just mostly aren’t here in Atlanta. The ones that are here are very cool whether they’re working moms or SAH moms.  But when I go home to the North, my old friends and I sit around their dining room tables in our pajamas, without make-up on, drinking coffee and telling stories as we laugh our asses off loudly in grand ol’ Philly style.

And that, to me, is my kind of friendship. And we do it without dice, and without booze, and without a doctrine, contract, or commitment. It’s organic, the way friendship is supposed to be, and I have no regrets.

226 Days - An Open Letter to the Sister I Don't Know

November is almost here which means it’s coming up on your birthday. You’ll be fifty this year which I’m sure you can’t believe. Your son, C, has graduated high school and your daughter, G R is full on into her teenage years. I know that you’re still in the state we grew up in. I’m sure you’re still as beautiful as you ever were. But that is the extent of my knowledge about you, my sister – the only one I have and never really knew.

Over the weekend I received notification that I had two new followers on my professional Twitter page. One was a jewelry industry company as most of my followers are, the other… was you. Or at least, I think it was you. It was your first name, spelled correctly, and your married last name. It showed that you had 0 followers but that you were following 1, (which I brilliantly deduced was me). It also showed that you had a couple of tweets that I couldn’t see because you had a private account which I was not privy to and so I did what I had done a few times before… I gulped, loudly. I put my shaky fingers on the keyboard, and I tried, as I had in the past, to make contact with you, ignoring the feeling in my stomach that told me I should do otherwise. I sent you a private message that stated the following:

Hi... it's been a long time and it surprised me to see you follow me. I miss you and think about you, J and the kids all the time.

That was days ago, and still I’ve received no response, but that’s okay. It doesn’t mean I’ll stop trying – this blog post proves that I will continue to reach out no matter how many times the door doesn’t get answered – and it doesn’t mean that I don’t feel for you exactly what I felt for you growing up, or when I first met you at age eighteen, or when I last saw you sometime around my twenty-first birthday, or what I will feel for you forever. Until the day comes that you yourself tell me to move on, I will do what I know in my heart is right.

I always knew I had you, meaning, I always knew I had a sister. From the time I could remember, in that little apartment on 63^rd street in West Philly, I knew that my father had an ex-wife, and that with her he had a daughter. Your picture stood framed on my father’s dresser. I don’t ever remember asking him “Daddy, who’s that?” I just always remember knowing that it was you – my sister. I remember looking through his art books and sketch pads as I often did and finding the picture he drew of you as a baby. You had beautiful full cheeks and lips and wispy hair across your brow. I would often ask him to draw a picture of me and he would say “I will, one day.” That day never came/never will come, but yours still exists, somewhere, in their house. I remember the note you scribbled on a napkin that you left on his car when you were a bit older. It had two words written in pencil: “Hi Dad” with no signature. He knew it was you, and he wrapped that napkin in plastic and kept it in his jewelry box with some of his most prized possessions.

Unfortunately, our father had many prized possessions and over time he failed to prove that any of those were either of us. I wrote this post on Father’s Day about how I quit him years ago, and about how my life has been so much brighter and more fulfilled without him in it, or anywhere near it. It’s sad, really, and was excruciating for years, but I remember something that you told me when I first met you officially back in 1992: when I asked about whether you were going to allow him into your life now that we found one another, you said, “You don’t understand… I never had a father, never needed one and never wanted one. My mother was enough. My grandparents – grandfather particularly, was enough. I just don’t know if I want him now.”

I didn’t understand it then, at almost nineteen years old. And maybe, I didn’t understand our relationship fully because I was still so young – the youngest of three with two older brothers. And probably because you were so old at thirty – the oldest of three with two younger brothers. In my naïve mind, you were here. I found you. You found me. I talked to that random lady on the Spirit of Philadelphia months before who was a hairstylist and who apparently knew you when I mentioned I had a sister I never met. What were the odds of that after nearly two decades of my life always wondering where you were, what you looked like and if you ever even knew I existed? You called my work. You said to the person who answered the phone, “Tell her this is Cheryl. Tell her… it’s her sister.” And I remember hanging up and walking to the bathroom and crying hysterically that the day had finally come. You were real. You had a voice and a phone and a laugh that I still remember. You were real, and you were going to be mine, at last. I was finally going to have you, not all to myself, but some to myself. I was still so young but I knew passion even then. I knew that the piece of my heart that had always been missing had grown instantly back in a six-minute phone call. My entire life I had wanted a sister, and I was about to have my wish granted.  

For what it’s worth, the few years that we knew each other were really wonderful for me. I’m sure that it’s super tough to be thirty-years old and realize you have this extra person in your life that you’re supposed to love because you share their blood and only because you share their blood. We didn’t have memories together. No childhood fights we could rehash and laugh about. I had no one to talk to boys about, or go to and cry when I lost my virginity. You had no one to mentor and guide through experience. We had our brothers, of course, but no matter what, they weren’t women.  And now here we were trying to build ourselves a relationship with nothing more than newness to start, and it was hard, for us both, and unfortunately over time, faded away.

So, without further hesitation I will say now what I should have said years ago:

I am sorry that I let you go. I am sorry for my part in not keeping the relationship going. I have no excuse other than I felt immense pressure from our father to question you about why you didn’t want him in your life, and I wrongly “sided” (for lack of a better term) with his feelings of hurt and anguish because I mostly knew his side of what I’m sure was a bullshit story. I am sorry that at nineteen and twenty and twenty-one years old I didn’t know what I knew at thirty, and thirty-five, and know now at nearly forty. I am sorry that I didn’t push harder to keep you in my life because I should have, no matter how you felt about me or what you thought of our relationship. I should have forced myself in until you told me to stop, but I was a coward, and that makes me wrong.

Until the day I die, Cheryl, I will care about you and think about you and think about your children that I will likely never know, and I will love you as much as I love my brothers no matter what you feel about me and no matter if you want me in your life or not. I can only hope that the person with your name who is following me on Twitter right now actually is you, and that if it is, you deep down in your heart love me just as much, too. You are my blood and while blood doesn’t necessarily make family, my family, and my heart, will always be incomplete without you.

I know it’s really early, but happy birthday.

Love,

Your sister

229 Days - Boobstravaganza 2012 (The Itty-Bitty-Tittie Post)

Jessica Rabbit and I have a handful of things in common. We are both women who know what they want and won’t settle. The men we love, we truly love, no matter who they are, what they look like, or what they’ve done in their past lives. We both look great in floor length gowns, garner attention when we walk into a room, and wear red lipstick better than any twenty-something in the universe. But there are two obvious differences between Jessica and me; two things that stand out more than any other characteristic that we have…

TITS.

I never had big breasts, never wanted big breasts, and never needed big breasts and still don’t, to be frank. What I’d like with the breasts I have is for them to defy gravity, which I know is about as possible as a grammatically correct Facebook post by a teenage boy, and so I do my best to remember to wear a bra to bed, as well as everywhere else, and to do my pushups, wing lifts and chest presses every single day, and I’ve got to be honest here, that shit actually works. But… that’s me. Miss B-Cup McLittletitty. The person who jokes that at times her breasts are so small that she appears concave. The one who has exclaimed that if she ever decided to do amateur night at the Cheetah, she’d be asked to leave the stage because “little boys aren’t allowed to perform… on Wednesdays.” Yep, that’s me, so what I want to know is, how do you gals with tig-ol-bitties fight the evil underlord that is gravity? What are you doing naturally to keep the girls standing at attention, and have you ever thought about getting a breast reduction? These are questions I’d like to know and I will use your answers in a future blog post, but for now, here are some interesting facts about boobs and boob-related things that I found:

1.   The largest boob size currently in existence from surgical implants is a 38KKK, and believe it or not, that surgery did not happen in the God-fearing southern states and those boobs do not burn crosses on people’s lawns, though I dare say they likely have done other things on their own.

2.   The average breast weighs one pound; however my breasts are on the South Beach diet.

3.   In China, “Bra Studies” is actually a course you can take and earn a degree in. In other news, Delta Airlines just issued 7,104 one-way tickets to Beijing from the United States. Make that 7,105… 6…7…..

4.   The term “Brassiere” was first used by Vogue magazine in 1907. Oh, Vogue… always ahead of the curve(s).

5.   The push-up bra was invented in 1948 by Frederick Mellinger (of Frederick’s of Hollywood fame) or as I like to refer to him: the greatest mammal with a penis who ever lived.

6.   Cigarette smoking can cause your breasts to sag more quickly than if you didn’t smoke, so add that to the other NINE BILLION REASONS YOU SHOULD QUIT.

7.   In 2011, 316,848 “boob jobs” were performed in the United States, which in comparison to the 416 blow jobs performed in 2011 means men walked away with a smile on their face either way.

8.   Most women get some form of nipple hair. And most men vomit at the thought of that.

9.   Your boobs get their own “monthly cycle.” I shit you not. According to an article in Cosmo (so it MUST be true!) your boobs are smoothest in the days after your period, sexually sensitive in the middle of your cycle (Of course they are. Stupid boobs,) and tender to the touch the week before your cycle (or as Todd likes to call that period of time… hell week).

10. “Cleavage” was originally used as a geological term in 1816 but was first used to describe the cleft between a woman’s breasts in a Time magazine article in 1946. I think Time should make “Boobs” its person of the year in 2013. Oh, wait, Clint Eastwood is already in the running you say? Okay. Well, same thing.

Fun stuff, eh? I thought so. I like boobformation, especially considering I really don’t have boobs. It’s like looking up how much horsepower a Mercedes has… I know I’ll never own one, but man, it’s good to drool over, right?  

I’m going to end this post with a snippet of video that I think we women can all relate to. Back in 2002, on my twenty-ninth birthday, my two best friends and I went to see the movie “The Sweetest Thing” with Cameron Diaz and Christina Applegate. If you’re a chick and haven’t seen this movie, you should, especially if you’re a chick in your late thirties or early forties, because it genuinely epitomizes what it was like to go out and go clubbing with friends in a big city from a woman’s perspective. At the time, the movies that came out that were stupid-funny (like this one) were more guy-themed, but this showed the other side… that women in their twenties could be just as cunning, just as cold, and just as “womanizing” as men (or, I guess it would be “menizing”) and that eventually you find the one you want to be with forever and live happily ever after until you divorce. This is one of my favorite scenes from that movie not because the scene is particularly funny, but because it is wholeheartedly true:

So c’mon gals… tell me about your titties in the comments section below, (you must have a Gmail account) on my Eve of Forty fan page on Facebook, or at @EveofForty on Twitter. What do you do to help fight gravity’s force?? Inquiring minds and horny men need to know.