Friday, December 12, 2008

Get lost.

You know, I think I would post more if I had a way to upload photos to my work computer. Of course, then I would probably get fired for misappropriating corporate assets or something, but with photos there is always something to base a post around. A piece with no pictures is, well, an article. And if I classify it as an article, well, then I start to imagine there’s a deadline, and rules about the quality of my writing, and all of a sudden I feel the pressure to be a New York Times-caliber blogger. If I could just slap up a picture of Eeyore looking cute, or of me eating my 346th bowl of ice cream of the year, or of the snow on the Rockies, the prose becomes not much more than supporting text and more accessible to my enormous readership.

You know, I think that someone outside my office is clipping her fucking fingernails right now. I hear that nasty, telltale little metallic “chht” that one should normally only hear as she clips her OWN nails in her OWN bathroom. You can add any sort of attention to one’s nails in public to the list of déclassé activities that I look upon with scorn, which such list is headed by the ever-popular CHEWING OF GUM. Chewing, popping, slurping, general making of spitty sounds – ohhhhh, God, it makes me ill just thinking about it. Yes, I have been reminded that with two kids I will be forced to grin and bear it through the consumption of veritable mountains of Hubba Bubba, but I will cross that bridge when I get to it. Plus, there’s a difference between a kid smacking his gum, as gross as it may be, and an adult who can’t be bothered to hold her slack jaw together enough to mute the wet, rubbery sounds within.

I’ll admit that I am hypersensitive to silly things like that right now. A couple of nights ago, I was in bed checking out LCD TV reviews on my computer, and R. was sitting next to me with his face next to my bent knee so he could see the screen. I could feel his breath all hot on my knee through my pajamas, in that steamy, damp way breath has when it comes through fabric, and I kept jerking away and making desiccated old schoolmarm faces. He quickly tired of my antics and left the room, but episodes like that are more and more common as I get to the irritable heffalump stage of my pregnancy.

This is where a photo of me would go if I could put one – smiling broadly so you could see both chins, wearing a short sleeved shirt as I held Eeyore so you could see the pale, flabby expanse of my upper arm flattened against my temporarily fabulous rack. I’ve actually got some pretty good arm muscles under all that flesh (flesh that reminds me an awful lot of the gelatinous interior of a fried turnip cake you’d get off the dim sum cart), but daily cookies and ice cream make it kind of a moot point.