The definition of love...

...is a husband who will take all three kids to the grocery store in the un-April-like, 90 degree heat to get the makings for a dinner he will cook for you, stopping on the way at the local Mexican joint to get a tub of guacamole, all so you can stay home on the couch with terrible cramps, drinking white wine at four in the afternoon, watching Sex and the City reruns.
I found a keeper.

Lord, help me

Just a quick one today as I am running around like a maniac getting ready for the kids' baptism this weekend and only found out Saturday the girls have to wear white dresses since the baptismal bibs won't fit over their giant noggins. Try finding a white dress, after Easter, that isn't a communion dress that costs a thousand dollars or is so cheap (and usually covered with plastic beading) that it smells of flame retardant. Madness, I tell you! So in the religious spirit I will give you a glimpse of some of our best church-inspired moments thus far. And, yes, they are all from my middle one (of "fur vagina" fame) since she not only marches to her own beat, but I think is listening to an entirely different band.

Picture her:

Marching around the house holding the child-sized broom from our housekeeping set upright, in front of her face, by its handle: "Look! I look like one of the helpers in church!" Translation? Altar boys.

Wearing pajama bottoms on her head with the legs dangling down her back: "I look like that lady at church" Translation? The nuns.

Sunday morning, in packed church, with furrowed brow, squinty eyes, pointing, as she loudly asks, "Who is that man? Why is he on that 'T' and why is he NAKED?" Translation: Mommy, I want you to die of humiliation.

I really can't wait to see what happens on Saturday. She can't beat my sister though, who almost peed in the sacristy when she was three. Unless, of course, she decides to take a dump.

"Somebody's getting maaaaried..."*

This is, apparently, a week of momentous events in Mean Mommy's life. Not only have we successfully bought and sold a house, but my only sister, KK, got engaged over Easter weekend to her girlfriend, Chrissy.

As I have mentioned several times before, my sister is gay. I have made references to her sexuality a few times, not feeling the need to put it in ALL CAPS, since as my sister puts it, "Being gay is part of who I am, not what I am." But the recent happy event in her life has made me think, even more than I already did, how brave and self-confident my sister, and all homosexuals, must be to live their lives openly in a world that does not give them and their relationships the respect they deserve. According to my research, only four states currently recognize same sex unions (SSU), and the federal government does not at all. It makes me so sad that when my sis and her partner do tie the knot they will not be privy to the same rights I have, being married to H, even though their commitment to each other is just as real.

The people who oppose SSU are the same people who think being gay is a choice. That makes sense - a life where the majority of the world will persecute you for loving the person you do, to have to perpetually be careful about who you are honest about your life with and holding hands with your significant other can cause perfect strangers to hurl insults at you? Sign me up! So perhaps reason and clarity are not exactly their strong suits. But, burning disdain aside, I really looked into the arguments against SSU to see what the cornerstones of this movement are. And as I suspected, they are pillars of sand.

The most concrete argument anti-SSU groups make centers around health and financial benefits. Why should one civil union partner be covered under the other's health insurance? That's money right out of companies' pockets! Well, let's say, worst case scenario, said uncovered partner has no health coverage whatsoever and goes to a hospital for charity care, who do you think is paying then? The taxpayer. If the covered partner pays out of his/her paycheck each month at a higher rate for family coverage, then what the hell are you bitching about? Either way, somebody is paying. And as for pensions, etc, what do you care who gets your coworker's 401K? Does it really help you sleep at night if Ken from accounting's mom gets his money rather than his partner who he's been living with for 25 years? Mind your business.

Another argument I happened upon was that schools would then have to begin teaching homosexuality is acceptable. Bet that pesky Darwinism's got you riled up too. Guess what? If you don't like the public schools teaching your children about homosexuality and other realities of the modern world like birth control there are these special schools for you - they're called parochial schools. And any other false truths, like racial and gender equality, that you're not comfortable with? It's called home schooling. Check it out.

My favorite argument, by far, though is that recognizing SSU would cheapen the instiution of marriage because then any Tom, Dick or Harry could get hitched. Really? You find obtaining a marriage license to be such a stringent screening process that only "special" couples can get married? I think Britney Spears' Las Vegas special sort of killed your argument there. Heterosexual marriage is no more special than SSUs, it's the people who make up the partnership who make it so. We all know plenty of crappy hetero couples who are still together making each other miserable, or divorced couples who were not a good match. If you are serious about marriage, regardless of your sexual preference, you will take it seriously. Just ask the Elvis impersonator at The Little Chapel of Love. I'm sure he sees only very serious, committed hetero couples.

It comes down to this: our country guarantees its citizens the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Happiness includes, for most people, finding someone to love and spend the rest of your life with. Gay men and women deserve the same right to build family and to have that family recognized legally, so that each partner has the right, after the worst happens, to keep what they have built together.

Despite this ongoing struggle, I wish my sister much happiness in the future. While we will run across some roadblocks in planning her big day such as, do I throw a Jill and Jill shower, I know she will be just as happy that day as I was the day I married H. And I will know no matter what the government thinks, she and Chrissy will then have the to right to argue over who drives the remote and who didn't replace the toilet paper.

*Props to you if you knew this line was from the wedding scene in Muppets Take Manhattan

How two idiots buy their dream house...

That's right, dear readers, Mean Mommy is moving! Finally, finally, finally, I can end my days in the world's smallest house and give up my title of The Woman Who-Will-Not-Yet-Call-Herself-Old Who Lived in the Shoe. Yes, I have kept you in the dark about the whole process since I am, apparently, as superstitious about real estate transactions as I am about revealing a pregnancy and only let the cat out of the bag when the danger of things falling apart has passed. Take solace in the fact that stress migraines a-plenty were the result of my not being able to overshare with you.

Hubby and I went about buying our new house in our usual way when it comes to finding a new dwelling - rushing in on a whim, wholly unprepared, depending on fate, God, or whatever you want to call it, to make things turn out right. In addition, H and I took on our usual roles of enthusiastic dreamer and skeptical nay-sayer respectively so it seemed we were off to a good start.

One Friday in early March, H emails me a link from one of the real estate websites he obsessively trolls (why he has so much time to be on the interwebs and yet claims to be "too busy to leave" in order to make it home in time to give baths is a mystery to me). The place looks cute enough, but we really aren't ready to buy a house yet, and despite my protestations, an appointment is made. I am so not interested in this place I decide to not even bother finding a sitter and will bring the offspring along, sure their antics will cut short any long-winded realtor talk. Hubby gets home from work and will not stop blathering on about this place. "Don't get your hopes up", I tell him as I go to bed. His response? To run a late-night-recon mission and scope out the joint as I slept. Oy.

This whole thing reminded me of the day we found our first apartment in Hoboken the month before we were to be married. On April 1st, flush with the tips I had been hoarding in a empty cottage cheese container, and the dazzling starter salary Soon-to-be-Hubby was raking in, H planned to go to Hoboken, alone, since I had class and shift a the restaurant, to find our first abode. Fast forward to the end of the work day and it begins to pour rain. H, in his one good suit, gets drenched just walking to the realty office and the realtor, who was just about to pack it in for the night due to the rain, took him to see a place that had just been listed and no one had yet seen. Without talking to me, H puts in a deposit and when he does reach me, is so hyper he's barely speaking English. Once I got beyond asking him if he was, in fact, insane, leasing a place without me, plans were made for me to see said palace the next day. It. Was. Perfect. And only the lack of a second bedroom drove us out of it for #1's arrival.

So I was secretly hoping this would be the case with this house, not that I told H. We arrived at the house and...I was in love. Shit. We were so not ready. Our house wasn't even on the market yet for Christ's sake! The realtor shows up, the lovely Cindi*, who would become our gift from above in this whole process, and as we walk through the house I try not to let her see the looks I am shooting H that read, "If I don't live here I will die". Hubby takes the kids into the backyard to check out the matching wooden playhouse - I know! - and while I am in the family room leaning against the fireplace - yay! -talking to Cindi, I look out and see H holding Little Man, the girls running and laughing behind him, and I tear up, knowing, like Miranda in that episode of Sex and the City, that I am home.

H comes back in and we start talking about the deal. Here's where the idiocy begins. We don't even know how to put in an offer. Plus, I have no poker face whatsoever and am gushing about how much I love this house and will include one of the children in the offer it makes any difference. And did I already mention our house, that we need to sell in order to buy a new one, is not actually up for sale yet? Cindi, bowled over by our stupidity, but kind enough not to show it, talks us through the steps, kind of like teaching your grandma to use the internet - explaining a frustratingly simple process to someone completely out of touch.

We pry the girls off the porch swing (squee!) and pile everyone back in the car. I turn to H, saddened by the fact that someone is sure to buy my dream house before we can sell our apartment-with-a-yard and tell him, "Get that house for me".

Cue Benny Hill-style zany music. H and I spend the next twenty four hours cleaning, organizing and making it look like three kids don't actually live in a space sized for two adults, all so we can get our house on the market by Tuesday, St. Patrick's Day**. We took breaks only to scan furiously through chapters of Home Buying for Dummies and Home Selling for Dummies. Am I joking? Sadly, I am not.

And this is where it gets really crazy. Remember all that bitching I did a while back about having to drag the kids, and the dog, out of the house for each showing? Well, I not only had to get all living beings under four feet tall out of the dwelling , I had to make it look like a spread in the damn Pottery Barn catalogue as well, complete with flowers and artfully arranged magazines on the coffee table which, on most days, is covered with pulverized goldfish and sticky with the residue of a thousand juice boxes. It is super fun having to lock your children in the basement so you can clean your house for complete strangers. Then where do you go with three kids and a dog? Mommy and Me frowns upon canines and he's too much of a spaz, other wise I'd pretend he was a seeing eye dog for the baby, which might work as LM walks into walls with great regularity anyway. Thank God I only had to do this for TWO DAYS.

Um, yeah, all that bitching I did? Well, we got an offer the first night we had the house listed - and it was a good one. Cindi called that evening (my apologies to her for my first reaction which was, to quote, "Shut. Up."), and much to my father in-law's chagrin, we accepted it***. What did an extra five thousand dollars matter if I WAS GETTING MY HOUSE??!! The kids were in bed by the time H got home and I literally knocked him over as I ran out the front door and catapulted myself onto him in the driveway. After dancing in the street like ridiculous fools, we continued to dance like ridiculous fools in the house as I had the theme song from The Jefferson's *****playing as we walked through the door.

Dear readers, I have been out of my mind not being able to write about this, but I really had to wait until all the t's were crossed and the i's dotted (waiting for a mortgage commitment letter is as close a feeling as you can get to waiting to get past the first trimester of a pregnancy, minus all the throwing up and constipation). I feel like all these great forces were at work and we are so, so lucky. H said the night we sold, "Maybe this church thing works!" I had, in fact, gone to the creepy religious store in town (is there any other kind?) and bought and buried a Saint Joseph statue in the lawn. With all the hoops I'm jumping through getting the kids baptized, I figured I could benefit from some Catholic voodoo and if beheading a live chicken on the front steps would have helped I'd have the beak marks to show for it as well. Our other lucky charm? A truck Little Man had left behind during our showing in the new house. The sellers kept it for us after accepting our offer hoping we would sell quickly and he could come back and get it when the house was his home. That? Made me cry.

So look forward to lots of posts about the joys of packing, unpacking, and the lack of air-conditioning that comes with hundred year old houses. I think, sadly for you all, you will find the snark level a bit low because how snarky can you be when, after a lot of hard times, you've been given your dream? Pictured above.


* I have to give a major shout-out to our realtor, Cindi Stadulis. Thanks, Cindi (who I hope actually read this instead of deleting the email from "that nutjob in Waldwick"), for all your good advice, sense of humor, and hand-holding. I owe you a drink, lady.

**The irony that I had good luck selling my house on the day I hear "Luck O' the Irish" so many times I want to slit my wrists, is not lost on me.

***In the days after our sale, we continued to show and actually received another offer. We went with the first family without starting a bidding war because we couldn't bear the thought of someone doing that to us and losing our dream house. Karma is a boomerang.

****Click either of the links, they both work. Boooo! to whoever disabled the audio on the Youtube clip!

"In your satin tights...Fighting for our rights..."

I have created monster. Well, to be more precise, a superhero.

Thursday is Sweatpants Day at #1's school*. Don't get me started on the fact that nobody under the age of fifty owns a pair of actual sweatpants since we have all moved on to track pants and yoga pants, but I spent the better part of yesterday morning racing through the mall, with Little Man in the stroller, flinging Teddy Grahams overboard, muttering curses under my breath, trying to accomplish the impossible task of finding, not only a pair of said sweatpants, but in kids' sizes. Sweating like a pig, since they keep the mall a comfy eighty five degrees, and I was pushing a combined total of eighty pounds of baby, stroller and gear, I arrived at the last possible source of said sweatpants, The Gap.

Of course, nary an unfashionable athletic pant in sight, I settle on a pair of grey yoga pants. Hauling my, now whining, toddler and my exhausted ass to the register, I plop my purchase down and out of the the corner of my eye, what do I spy? WONDER WOMAN T-SHIRTS! Squee! I excitedly began to paw through the pile of purple, sparkly-lettered shirts emblazoned with an artfully faded image of WW surrounded by the phrase "Girls Rule". I immediately grab two, not blinking at the ridiculous price I was about to pay for a cotton T-shirt as I was about to introduce my girls to their new hero.

A little back ground. As a girl I was obsessed with Wonder Woman, as were most young girls in the early seventies. And how could you not be? She was beautiful and strong and wore a crown with matching jewelry that also happened to be a boomerang and bullet-proof respectively. I had the poster, the bedspread, the Underoos, and of course, wore the tragic, plastic drugstore costume one Halloween and, as Jerry Seinfeld described his own plastic Superman costume, looked like Wonder Woman in her pajamas.

So as soon as the girls arrived home from school, I displayed my prizes only to be greeted with silence. Well, of course, they have no idea who this woman is. I must educate them! I tell them, "This is Wonder Woman! She's a superhero and a princess!" Intrigued, the girls sat down next to me on the couch as I opened the laptop and pulled up a clip from Youtube. To say they were immediately hooked is an understatement. WW is like little girl crack. "Show us more! Pleeeease?"

Thus began a very unproductive afternoon. We started with the basics. In fact, I was reeducating myself. I had to go back to WW's roots and show the girls her Amazonian island beginnings. #1 was hooked at this point as they all wear floaty dresses and have flowers in their hair. In the first episode, Cloris Leachman plays the queen and WW's mother! Huh, she didn't always look like a raisin. Here we saw the presentation of the tiara, the bracelets and The Golden Lasso of Truth, which I spent a good fifteen minutes explaining and then finding clips of them in action.

Then we got to WW's departure and her arrival in our world (#1 cried, "Why is she leaving her mommy?"). Apparently, unbeknownst to my six year old self, the first few seasons of Wonder Woman took place during World War II. Diana Prince, WW's cover, is a secretary for the US military and the bad guys are all Nazis in the beginning. This is where the fun began because I was able to show them clip after clip of Diana Prince doing the famous arms-out-twirl and becoming Wonder woman. Here was also introduced the invisible plane. How to Christ did that make sense? It did to my kids. As we moved forward into latter seasons of the show, apparently, there is a time warp and WW took place in the modern day. This is where I found this amazing fight clip. I also discovered some major star power - Debra Winger plays her little sister! Red Buttons plays a Nazi spy! Amazing.

As we watched, tears of laughter rolled down my face. This show was seriously, seriously bad. The dialogue is awful, the stunts, laughable, as some rail-thin stunt guy is flung around the set wearing a wig doing one of WW's "super jumps". Times were so different - look at how skinny and un-muscled Linda Carter is! Today, she'd be in the gym six hours a day and look like Jennifer Garner (my BFF) in Electra. And the costume! How the hell is anyone supposed to run in what is, essentially, a strapless bathing suit? And the bottom is so badly cut, the borderline-anorexic Carter actually looks like she's got some badonkadonk.

But even as bad as it was, I love the fact that this is a female super hero, so much so I am ordering Season 1 on DVD to watch with my girls (and when drunk with H). The way they latched onto this character proves there is something so impressive about strong, female characters to girls that it makes me sad there is no current day equivalent**. After our viewing was over (read: I realized hours had passed and Little Man's diaper was outrageously full and it was already dinnertime), I was making dinner and heard #1 rummaging around in my closet. She appeared in the outfit, pictured above and proceeded to make her own bracelets and Lasso of Truth out of paper, tape, a paper plate and string. #2 called me into the living room, where I found her, naked, holding her clothes and spinning in a circle in a hilarious recreation of the early season spin transformations where Wonder Woman was actually holding her clothes when she finished.

So it looks like Diana Prince is now a permanent fixture in my house. She has unseated Pocahontas as next year's choice for Halloween costume and I think those T-shirts are going to fall apart pretty quickly with such frequent wear. I love the fact my girls have a new hero, especially one I loved so much myself (even if she does look like she needs a more supportive costume and to eat a damn sandwich). And to top it all off she wears some kick-ass boots.

* Next week there is "Crazy Sock Day" which I also had to shop for and came away completely unsuccessful. My kids wear white socks! Who the hell comes up with this shit?

** There is a movie, which I have not investigated, slated for 2009 release. I will check it out and report back. I do not have high hopes.

Grandma's gettin' her groove on...

Wow, am I old. I don't necessarily mourn the fact that I am aging, it comes with some pretty good perks - wisdom, (not that I'm cornering the market on that one yet), the knowledge that skirts should never fall between the knee and ankle, and the ability to carry off a trench coat and Jackie-O sunglasses without looking like I'm wearing a costume. But the reality of my advancing years can hit me like a smack in the face sometimes and I had such an experience this weekend.

H and I were out in the city for a birthday party and on our way home, tipsy, we decided to stop in our old it's-Saturday-night-and-we're-wasted haunt, Johnny Rockets, for some cheese fries with a side of indigestion for the next morning. While it was still early by the standards of the young and childless, twelve-thirty to be exact, the place was still crawling with young'uns, the boys in the current Saturday night uniform of pressed, oddly European-seeming dress shirts with distressed jeans and the girls in leggings and heels so high I wondered whether their monthly cab fare was higher than their rent*. But what I was most surprised by was how young they all seemed to me. They were all drunk so they had to be over twenty-one, but they might as well have been fifteen in my book.

It was surprising to me because I still feel about twenty-seven and that's not much older than the babies I was eating burgers with. So the question becomes, when will I feel old and is that a problem? I know my body will reflect the onward march of time, but I don't think my mind will for a while. What happens in ten years when it really is weird for H and I to go to a bar where most patrons are too young to know Brett Michaels wasn't always the weave-wearing, fished-lipped, hot mess looking for a girlfriend on Rock of Love, but used to be in an actual band that played actual music and had actual fans (myself not included, as any affinity I had for "Talk Dirty to Me" has been obliterated by Hubby's replaying trying to get to the next level of Guitar Hero)? I can't imagine I will lose my love of dancing any time soon. Will I be that creepy old lady on the dance floor? It's too sad to contemplate that at some point my only Saturday nights out that include drinks and dancing will also probably involve bad wedding food.  I'll be "Crazy Aunt Mary" who the neices and nephews all run away from.

Maybe this is the modern dilemma since no one wants to get old - hence the plastic surgery boom. But at some point we have to make way for the truly young and not just the young at heart. Nothing can make young people feel weirder than grandma on the next barstool - don't kill their buzz. I will just have to relegate my dancing to said catered affairs and the confines of my own home. Which H will love so I can stop dragging him on the dance floor. Who knows, if we find a house big enough monthly dance parties at Chez Mean Mommy might become the new hot ticket in the 'burbs.

*In my day we had the sense to wear practical, unflattering, stacked heels and high-waisted jeans

To my girls,

While you are usually the source of most of my exasperated, "Can you believe this stuff?"* posts, after the morning we had today, I had to take the opportunity to eat some humble pie.

When I got out of the shower exhausted from the long week, ready for the day to be over before it had begun, as it was pissing rain and cold, #1, there you were with your outrageous bedhead, holding your babies against your face to enjoy their comforting stench (you really need to let me wash those soon), whispering a quiet, "Good morning" with your shy morning smile. While I dressed, you asked me if you could wash your face and handing you a washcloth you replied, "No, like you do" and when that was done you insisted on dressing in track pants, like the ones I was wearing, and asked me to make your sister's lunch on the table, rather than at the counter so "you could be next to me". You asked if you could help make your lunch and in the middle of a peanut butter explosion told me, "I love doing things like you. Can we do it every morning?"

#2, even you, who despises mornings more than Dracula himself, came bounding into the living room this day, tripping over the hem of your too-long nightgown, dragging your pillow, babies, and essentially the entire contents of your bed into the room, with a happy, "'Morning, Mom." rather than skulking over to the couch with a scowl on your face, as you usually do, mumbling a gravel-voiced request for milk. After your sister got off to school, you had a hugging festival on the couch with Little Man, and didn't even scream when he tried to abscond with your bowl of cantaloupe. Since you overslept and we were running late, I expected a morning full of constant cajoling to "please hurry up" and subsequent tears, but I, truly, was proven wrong when I heard you call from the living room, "Don't come in. I want to surprise you!" and after a few moments, there you were, all dressed, telling me, "I even went pee-pee!"

Girls, how do I deserve mornings like this? Me, who is planning on earning a living describing your antics and the toll they take on me (your father included, but he forgot to make the milk cups this morning so he can kiss my behind*). How is it possible, with the amount of yelling I do, how tired and grumpy I'm sure I must seem to you at times, how little time I feel I have for each of you individually, that you know when I'm am at my wits end and give me a morning that makes me see, so very clearly, why I am here? That you love me with such abandon, when I feel like all I do is complain about what I have given up for you, shows me how much I am given.

I will hold the images of this morning in my mind for a long time. #1, you standing all long-giraffe legs, in your pj top and underwear, on a chair at the kitchen counter, trying so hard not to cover yourself and the entire kitchen in peanut butter and using a whole roll of scotch tape to reattach a wayward juice box straw as you made your lunch. #2, the prideful glee emanating from your little face when you presented yourself, fully clothed. What was your happy response to my frantic-we-are-late-and-it's-my-turn-to-carpool "Where are you?"? "I'm getting my soos (shoes) on for you!"

Thank you my girls, for being my girls. And while you are the butt of many jokes around here, please know, without you, there would be no Mean Mommy - real or online.

Mommy

*Gotta keep the language clean since I am actually writing as if my children read this, ya know?

Who buys this crap?

During my warm-up on the treadmill this morning, I was enjoying a few pages of my Glamour (since you all know how I feel about parenting mags)and I decided to actually read the beauty section. I normally pass this area over as I doubt I will find time to expand my current weekday beauty regimen of sunscreen, chapstick and mascara anytime soon, nor do I have loads of extra cash to purchase trendy colors of eye shadow and lipstick that I will wear three times before they are out of style. And shut up, H, I know the makeup I do use is expensive, but do you really want a wife who uses Wet 'n Wild cosmetics and the look that comes with it? Seriously.

Anyway, this obviously means it's been a while since I have delved into the current world of beauty and, much to my surprise, the trend I thought would go the way of skinny jeans** is still going strong - lip gloss. A few years back, when I was coming out my postpartum haze, I decided I needed some new makeup for an upcoming event and I happily trotted off to my local MAC counter (who RuPaul was a spokesperson for, incidentally). Feeling like and out-of-touch schlub I let the overly made up gay man, who I was probably sleep deprived enough to believe was actually RuPaul talk me into buying, not only a set of false eye lashes (which were ripped off in a drunken fury in the ladies room during said event), but a tube of MAC's Lipglass as well. I left the store feeling tapped in to the beauty mainstream and cheerfully looked forward to wearing my purchases.

The night of the event arrives, and after carefully blowing out my hair, gluing on my falsies (lashes, not boobs, as I was nursing and had enough cleavage for ten women), getting dressed in an outfit that strategically hid my baby weight and aforementioned giant mammaries, I whipped out my Lipglass and carefully applied a coat with the snazzy little wand. I look so cute! My lips looked fuller and sexy! I was young and modern! Already running late, I turned quickly to grab my handbag and, immediately, the front of my carefully blown out coif was stuck to my lips. Extract hair, reapply. Entering the living room to say goodbye to the kids, I leaned over to kiss them and each was left with a shimmery pink oil slick on their cheeks. Clean children, reapply.

Hubby and I make our escape and as he opens the car door for me (as he does on date nights and I wish he would do every day, but since I'm usually the one driving I guess I should be opening his door) and kisses me. He now looks like he's been making out with a tub of Crisco. Wipe off H's mug, reapply (and repeat, repeat, repeat, as H and I do a fair amount of smooching once we are free of the progeny which might be the reason we have so many). We get to the party and after my first sip (OK, gulp) of wine I see my glass has a disgusting, sticky, pink residue around the rim. Blech. And I'm sure this shit has come entirely off my lips again. And with that, my affair with lip gloss was over.

I simply can not understand how women so faithfully use a product that prevents any rapid movement when sporting unrestrained hair, kissing of loved ones and significant others, and drinking. Ponytail-wearing, reclusive, teetotalers can not be supporting this market alone. Then I figured it out that it must be the single gals who keep this boat afloat. Who else has time to constantly reapply cosmetics and the desire to look desirable, but no guarantee said attractiveness will result in any physical contact? Plus they do most of their drinking at bars so no embarrassing, greasy glasses left behind at dinner parties.***

So I will continue to use my matte wineberry MAC lipstick even if it means I'm a cosmetic neanderthal because life that does not include wine, copious smooches from my kids and making out with Hubby in the van on the way home from date night just doesn't make sense.

*Read: daily debate with myself over whether slogging my way through a pathetic jog or returning to my nice, warm bed would be a better use of my scant "alone time". And I use quotations since time spent torturing yourself on a piece of exercise equipment should be considered a physical necessity like using the toilet despite H's insistence it's the equivalent to an hour at the nail salon and qualifies as both "alone time" and "personal maintenance". Sure, and do you want me to start wearing elastic waist, pleated jeans since they will be the only ones I fit into without these efforts? I thought not.

**Skinny jeans only look good on the anorexic, heroin-addicted models designers hang out with and should never have been mass marketed as evidenced by the pairs that were painted on teens at the local mall. Not even they, at their lithe teenaged best look decent in them.

***Single readers feel free to clue my in on how lip gloss plays into kissing when on dates.