EYELASH OF EVIL

Why?

Why must it torment me so?

Why can't it just stick up top with the other eyelashes?

Stupid eyelash of evil.

ANOTHER UNDERWEAR RANT

When I was pregnant, I had issues with maternity panties. They are the reason I only have one child.

A few years ago, when I was no longer pregnant, the brand of underwear that I had been purchasing for YEARS changed from S, M, L, XL, XXL to size numbers. That annoyed me and it took several purchases before I figured out my magic number. It took me a while longer to realise that not all makes of that brand fit, even though they were purchased at the same size number.

I hate underwear makers. But as I imagine the actual people making the goods to be children in third world countries, making pennies a day so their families may eat more than mud soup, I let it slide. I mean, those poor underwear making kids!

Now it is strange to admit this, but a family friend passed away (I still miss her) and her husband was giving away her possessions to family and friends. He gave some underwear, still brand new, with tags on and everything, to my mother. She gave them to me. I said, "Those are not going to fit me, Mom." She was quite insistent that they would and it was time for me stop wearing baggy, ugly clothes and start dressing like a real person and not a bag lady. Okay, she didn't say that with words, but she said it with her eyes. With love.

So I took them home.

And they sat in my dresser.

For weeks.

Then it occurred to me that my clothes WERE getting a bit baggy. I decided it was time for some new undies, since the ones I had been sporting were becoming akin to a horrid display of droopy granny panties. Then I started to accept the fact that I had been losing weight and maybe... just MAYBE these panties from a friend who had left us much too early, panties much nicer than ones I'd ever bought for myself in years, mind you, they MIGHT just fit. But they probably wouldn't.

So I tried them on.

They fit.

They fit!

How odd.

It had to be a manufacturer's error. Surely if I went and bought new panties at this size, they would not fit. I'd been fooled by numbers in the past, after all.

So Wonko, Weeb and I went out shopping. Weeb needed new socks. And underwear. So I figured I'd look. Just look.

I kept looking at the packages. What a lot of stupid underwear choices. I don't want so many choices. And how am I NOT in XXL territory? I FEEL XXL. I pick up a package and show it to Wonko. "These won't fit me."

"They will," he says.

"Nope, we'll buy them and take them home, I'll try them on and just feel sad," I said.

"They'll fit," he said (in a way that suggested that he was quite DONE with being in the mall and wanted desperately to NOT be in the mall OR hear me complaining about panties anymore and just by some already).

So we bought some.

But they were not going to fit.

So when we got home, I tried them on.

And they fit!

Amazing!

Now, and this is why I continue to hate underwear manufacturers, the blues ones fit. Those were the ones I'd tried on right away. The white ones fit. I tried those ones on the next day.

The problem was the black ones. One pack consisted of a blue, a white and a black pair of panties (why are they called pairs?). The black ones, in both packages I bought, were SLIGHTLY smaller, slightly tighter than the other two pairs in the package.

WHY is one pair of panties smaller than the others in the pack?!

I check the label. It says the right size. But for some reason, it's just a bit tighter and makes a glorious ripping sound at the elastic when I was in the bathroom doing bathroomy things that involve underpants.

I curse you, underwear manufacturers! I curse you to heck!

(And in case you are interested in the Panty Rant from Pregnancy, go here: http://yasherthegreat.blogspot.com/2010/03/maternity-panties.html.)

BIKES AND BODIES AND BOOTS (TO THE HEAD)

We went out briefly tonight. But that's not really interesting.

The interesting bit happened on the drive home.

We were turning right, off a main street, to a side street when we noticed a body and a bike lying in the crosswalk of the main street.

We stopped the car. Wonko hopped out. I turned the car off and called 911, because, you know, body and a bike in the street!

I thought, momentarily, that it was odd that they were lying so straight, on their back, in the crosswalk. And why was the bike at his head? And why couldn't I see a face? Then I thought back to an event in my teen days where a friend of a friend had been drunk and passed out on a road and been hit by a car (he didn't die, but it didn't have an especially happy ending).

Two women were on the sidewalk, watching. I got out of the car to see better. Poor Weeb kept asking what was going on and I told her that we thought someone needed our help and I was calling 911.

As the 911 operator answered (very quickly, I might add; I've always been impressed with our 911 service), Wonko was walking back to me, then he turned and went back to the body and dragged what was now very clearly NOT a body, to the sidewalk.

I apologized to the 911 operator and explained that we thought someone was in the crosswalk, but it turned out to be a bike, and clothes stuffed with paper to look like a body. And it was covered in ketchup.

Yeah, you read that right.

The 911 operator explained he still had to transfer me to the police. Now I'm explaining to a police officer what had happened. He seemed confused as to why I was transfered from 911 if it was a prank. I explained the 911 operator said they had to transfer me. Then I suggested that they might want to send a car since Wonko had just dragged the stuff to the sidewalk and the A-Hole pranksters might just drag it back to the street.

When I say this was in the crosswalk, I'm saying if a car had been driving in that lane, it would have run over 'the body'. Or at least screeched to a halt trying to avoid it. And how would you feel on a nice Saturday night if you'd hit something with your car? I know I'd want to hurl.

I will say that another fellow was driving from the side street onto the main street when he saw our car stopped, doors open and Wonko pulling something off the road, and this guy got out of his car and offered to help. Hats off to you, dude!

And a big thumbs up to my brave little Weeb who kept her cool in the car!

So to the kind pranksters who covered my husband in ketchup, gave me a heart attack and freaked out my kid, BOOT TO THE HEAD.

PARKING TOO CLOSE TO A PREGNANT WOMAN

This is another rant, written while I was pregnant in 2005. My best rants seemed to come in August that year. Perhaps I was not enjoying the heat. Regardless of the reason behind my vast un-Zen-ness, I was making my online pregnant pals chuckle. You'll notice it's about one of my favorite pet peeves, pregnant or not.

August 30, 2005

Do I have a big sign on my car that says PREGNANT - FOR A LAUGH, PARK REALLY CLOSE TO ME?!

Nothing makes me feel happier, sexier or gives me the confidence to keep hauling my ever swelling self into public like the joy of trying to squeeze my body-for-two into my car upon the realisation that some dingbat has parked 2 inches from my driver side door.

And you'd think me parking to the right of a parking spot, thus giving myself the most space possible on the driver side would be enough to ensure my ease in car reentry. Wrong-O! All this seems to do is make me a bigger target!

I swear, the bigger I get, the more people take it upon themselves to park as close to me as physics will allow! I think they would only be happier if they could actually park INSIDE my car!

And I'm pretty certain that being pregnant actually ATTRACTS people to you! I need a wide birth people (no pun intended) and I certainly don't need to be swarmed by people needing to brush up against the beauty of the newness of life that I carry within me. I'm big, I'm hot, my feet and back hurt and I am probably hungry and you can bet your boots I just want to wedge my butt into my car and go home! But people are just naturally attracted to life and that is why they must suddenly be close to me and my parked car!

I think that once you hit the mark of not getting in or out of a car comfortably, you are technically handicapped. Why don't WE get those nice wide handicapped spaces? I'm at least as big as a wheelchair at this point! And probably twice as dangerous when forced into tight spaces!

Forget BABY ON BOARD stickers, I want one that says I'M HUGE AND AM GOING TO DENT YOUR EFFING CAR IF YOU PARK TOO CLOSE TO MY DRIVER'S SIDE! And it had better come with a handicapped parking sticker!

MATERNITY PANTIES

This was written in 2005, when I was pregnant. It was a bit of a laugh (particularly among my online pregnancy support buddies, due around the same time as I was)and I thought it might be worth dusting off. I'm fairly certain that Maternity Panties are one of the top five reasons why we decided to stop breeding after our daughter was born.

August 29, 2005

What is the deal with maternity panties?

What twisted sick mind came up with their design?

I bought some on Saturday when I was shopping and my sister and I had a conversation like this:

Yasher: What size should I get?
MJbean: What do you normally wear? You should get the size you normally wear.
Yasher: I'm not normally pregnant.
MJbean: *glare* Get large if you buy large.
Yasher: But what if they aren't big enough? Maybe I should get X-large.
MJbean: *glare* Then get X-large. But you're only supposed to get the size you'd normally wear.

My sister is very smart. I don't question her as much as I just like to taunt her.

So I buy the large. I take them home. Last night I am brave enough to open a package.

No word of a lie, I could sail a boat with these things!

They are enormous! No, they are bigger than that! What is bigger than enormous? Gigantic! They are gigantic.

I show them to Wonko. I've never seen him laugh so hard. He suggests I take them back to the store. I say I should try them on first.

Then this little fever of terror strikes me. What if they fit? What if these gigantic things actually fit me? Morning sickness has NOTHING on the nausea I feel at this moment.

So I try them on.

I quickly conclude that some evil twisted creep of what certainly MUST be a man has designed these implements of insult with no idea in mind of what a pregnant woman actually looks like.

If I cut these panties in half, horizontally, they would look like regular panties. Apparently pregnant women require panties that are worn just under the boobs and arm pits. The bits below my navel fit okay. In fact, they are slightly large. No problem, I think, I am entering the 3rd trimester, I will grow into them.

The bit that really has me baffled is the two inches of uncomfortable lace at the waist. Why would they make the waist of maternity panties with two inches of uncomfortable lace AND make that bit fit tighter than anywhere else?

Ah right, because they are meant to be worn just under the boobs and arm pits, which, as everyone knows, is the thinnest place on a pregnant woman. Okay, maybe everyone doesn't know this and the reason for this is because it's not actually the case.

So the waist, which one would assume requires the most stretch in a maternity pantie is tighter than the boat sail of fabric between the bizarrely tight waist and the unusually large gusset.

Now, let's talk about the actual fit, beyond the tight waist, if you can still call it the waist when it's hiked up around the underside of your boobs and your arm pits.

To wear these things loosely, the waist digs into your midsection then rolls annoyingly into whatever the narrowest point at your waist is. The only way to fix this is to ensure the waist is firmly yanked up to your under-boob and arm pit areas where it will now pinch ever so slightly in an uncomfortable lace slash tight elastic kind of manner.

The added sexy benefit of having the panties yanked up this high is that the holes your legs fit through are also yanked up high. I can now see my hip bones (or what there is left to see of hip bones on a 6 month pregnant large woman) through the pantie leg holes. The gusset is now stretched nearly thong thin.

I am quite certain that there is more elasticity in one of the leg holes then there is at the waist which has me question, momentarily, whether or not I am wearing these panties in the correct fashion.

Not a sexy look. Truly, I can understand how I may never have any more children after this one as I believe that the concept of sex appeal and me in the same thought will never cross my husband's mind ever again.

I have purchased 6 pairs of these horrid little pieces of clothing. I would have thought that the last 3 months of pregnancy would be hard enough without battles with my undies every moment of every day.

I guess the lesson learned here is that, the more horrid the panties, the happier you will be to be out of them when in labor. How bad can labor be when the alternative is to deal with maternity panties?