Sunday Suppa: trans fat free

Once again I skipped out on the new recipe bit and decided to go for a classic. I knew I would be needing comfort food with a new temp job commencing the next day and more importantly after the stress of putting the final touches on my wedding invitations.

I love my Italian food. I cannot wait to someday travel to Italy where I can drink wine and eat delicious food followed by a nap outside in some olive grove. Unfortunately, that time is not anywhere near now. Instead, I eat my good Americanized Lasagna as quickly as possible. Someday I will join and relish in the slow food movement.

My night was not completely lost to invitations and barely tasting my dinner. We made a warm batch of brownies from a box. Fear not, the box was carefully selected to be trans fat free and the brownies were made from an egg from a chicken raised in a certified humane way.

I ate my warm brownie with a bowl of vanilla ice cream. Sundays are not the healthiest days of my week, but it makes all my impending exercise seem so worth it.

Getting over party anxiety

I received my bridal shower invitation in the mail. I was very excited, but then the panic and anxiety took over.

I have rarely had parties that celebrate me. I had one in high school and then maybe a few others in elementary school. Each time it has included a gaggle of girls and ended up in some weird girl gang where I was the outsider at my party. My feelings have always gotten hurt.

Could this happen now when I am an adult surrounded by adult friends and family? It is a bridal shower! No one has ever made the bride cry in anguish, right? Well, I have to believe that since my shower is being thrown by people that love me that I will be ok. Plus, there is already an extra perk; I need a cute new outfit for my shower so I get to shopping!

A girl, a woman, or something in between

I’m not the same girl. Am I a girl? I recently heard Christina Aguilara’s new song “Not myself tonight” where she repeats several times that she is not the same girl. Is she still a girl?

I am getting ready for my 24th birthday which means that I will be in my mid-twenties. I have given some thought to whether that means I still get the title of young woman or if I will officially become a woman with neither young or old attached to who I am. I wasn’t really entertaining the idea of being a girl still.  Am I allowed?

As a girl fantasizing about being grown up, being a woman, I did not imagine the culture of my womanhood. I imagined myself as a woman. Unfortunately the bigger breasts I had envisioned never came into fruition. I do feel a little reluctant to let go of my girlhood. I would like to take it with me as I enter my womanhood. There is something powerful in the carefree attitude that my own girlhood contained which seems unlike womanhood land, which contains even more rules and roles.

Perhaps, I should embrace the intertwining of girlhood and womanhood that this transition to adulthood elicits. It is probably why we have the term young woman. I am not the same girl because I am not solely a girl anymore as I now have some of that womanhood thrown into the mix. While womanhood land may have some rules and roles that come with being an adult I believe I will discover a freedom unlike in girlhood; the freedom that comes with the ability to make choices.

Sunday Suppa: forget manners

I may be stuck in a ‘what’s for dinner’ rut that only exists on Sundays, which is the day that I am supposed to dazzle you with my cookery. Instead I gave into fulfilling my desired cravings of roast chicken.

Roasting and eating a chicken with two people is the only way to eat chicken. You never have to be polite about not taking too much of one part of the chicken and by the time you get to second servings you get to pick at the chicken with your fork. The best part is that when I make gravy I get to dip my chicken or seconds mashed potatoes directly into the bowl of gravy.  So long flat belly.  Welcome cellulite.

What? Manners? Not in my home of two.

My totally hip Saturday

What poor post-grads do on their Saturdays when given free Census 2010 gear... 

I'm disturbed.  I totally have a mustache in this pic.

Mike should really consider tanning.

One of my most attractive pictures of all time!

Many thanks to the government!

 

Getting familiar

Every year I go for my annual gyn exam, and every year my doctor walks in and introduces herself to me as if it was our first time meeting. This year was different as I opted for a “Hope” appointment where I skipped the dreaded stirrup pelvic exam and instead talked about my medical history, got my blood pressure checked, and then renewed my prescription.

This year was even more different when after the introduction she said I looked familiar. Yet, my vagina was fully clothed. I only become familiar when I’m clothed? Is that good or bad? Perhaps, it would be slightly more uncomfortable if while my doctor was sitting between my legs she then said I looked familiar. We then would ponder what that means.

There is another much more important point to consider. How familiar are we with our own vaginas, vulvas, whatever? If women were shown pictures of genitalia would they be able to pick out their own? It is probably time to start friendly introductions to our own bodies until each part can be familiar. I say familiar because frequent reintroductions are important. After all we are always changing.

What's in a name

Over the course of my engagement family and friends have treaded lightly around my last name. Would I keep my last name, hyphenate, or get rid of it to acquire my fiance’s last name? I still cannot pronounce my future hubbie’s last name correctly. I am glad that I have the freedom to be able to choose what to do with the whole last name situation although I never would have guessed that it would have felt so loaded with meaning for me.

Some thoughts:

1. I have decided that I cannot hyphenate the two names together. My name would be forever long as I already have two middle names.

2. If I give up my current last name I would be cutting off the last connection I have to my deceased father and to a family I never really got to know. Plus, changing my last name would be a huge pain in the ass.

3. Men have the option to change their last names though it would take one mighty search to find a man who doesn’t bawk at the idea. I can’t help but wonder if I take on this part of my fiancé what part of me will he take on?

I have actually already decided that I would change my last name even though I have some mixed feelings about it. Ultimately, I see changing my last name as an opportunity to add to my identity.

Sparkles don't belong there

WTF vajazzle?! Ok, so I have heard a lot about this whole Jennifer Love Hewitt vajazzle thing lately; well just that it is something about adorning the vajayjay (not my word I hate it) area with some sparkly shit. Seriously? Some things are not meant to be sparkly. After once again seeing some hater vajazzling comments I decided to use my friend google to search vajazzle.

The first website is...

RATE MY VAJAZZLE

Naturally I clicked on it. Could it possibly actually contain vajayjays all vajazzled? And it does! With no “you must be an adult to enter warning”! The first picture was horrifying. Why on earth would a woman put sticky sparkly fake diamond dots on her vulva? Here I was all worried about the trendiness of pubic hair when really I should have been worried about finding the right vajazzle. Maybe I should just be worried that women are still clueless about their anatomy.

Message: The vagina (vajayjay) is not the vulva.

I feel bad for tween girls and hope that this gross misogynistic fad ends quickly and never reaches their already too vulnerable minds. I am officially a vajazzle hater.

Sunday Suppa: Easter = ham not bunnies

For the past several Easter holidays I have consumed all the ham I can handle for a year on Easter. As part of a young couple without children and with family within 30 minutes, holidays tend to bring on the travel and multiple meals. It has definitely taken some adjusting in my twenties to not awaken to my mother’s beautiful Easter baskets with chocolate bunnies and other goodies. Instead it is all about the ham.

For breakfast we attended the annual breakfast at Mike’s grandmother’s senior housing. Every Easter she reserves the community kitchen and activity space for the large family gathering. Mike’s uncle poaches eggs in maple syrup and then there is ham, which is served plain and simple. It is definitely a meat and potatoes breakfast without the potatoes or any sort of vegetable or fruit. I tried Sweet and Low in my coffee for the first time as the regular sugar was gone. I do not recommend Sweet and Low AT ALL. Clearly, this was my punishment for not being Catholic nor taking part in Lent.

After breakfast it was off to my mother’s house for a late lunch. She had mentioned that she was going to do an unconventional Easter. I was slightly worried about this. Lately, she has been on a fish binge and I dislike fish, which she knows however my family has this nice way of ignoring my dislikes. When we arrived she had decided that the ham Easter dinner would do just fine. We had ham cooked with a fruit mixture, carrots cooked with maple syrup, asparagus, and potatoes baked in a cast iron skillet over the coals from my mother’s spring burn pile. Of course she had also made deviled eggs with eggs fresh from a local farm. For dessert she served up huge pieces of her cheesecake which we enjoyed outside in the rare Vermont Easter sunshine.

I am unsure about this newish ham fest that is called Easter. I miss the chocolate bunnies and I want bubbles and a pink jump rope. I might go and find a discount aisle somewhere just so I can have a little Easter redemption to balance out all this ham.

Hillbilly pranks

I don’t know why people think April Fool’s Day sucks. It is the only day of the year where you get to be really mean, slightly evil, and conniving without any sort of punishment as long as you eventually tag on the “April Fools!” I tried to come up with something to fool my boy toy. Sadly, I think we burnt them all up when we were first dating in our attempts to flirt. All of these pranks ended horribly.

Example One: My friend and I tied a doe (that’s a girl deer) decoy to the top of Mike’s jeep during hunting season. I’m not a complete hick though because I didn’t know it was currently the hunting season for the bucks not the does. Oops.

Example Two: You know by now that I love animals a little too much. I still eat them, but I avoid placing faces on what I am eating. Once, I thought Mike was duck hunting alone with someone else’s truck. Again, my friend and I thought it would be funny to put trash all over the truck and a big sign that said “DUCK KILLER” on the windshield. Of course he was not alone and the truck belonged to his step-dad. Oops. Later that week I got drunk and had a lovely episode of sitting in a bath tub crying because I knew Mike’s parents would hate me. I was officially the bad news girl.

Example Three: Mike walked my mesmerized self out to my car when it was time for me to venture home. I am sure we just ended one of our first hot make-out sessions so I was completely off in my own world trying to stay super cool. I sat down in my car and Mike was laughing and laughing. I was still trying to be cool. Finally, Mike had to point out what he did. He placed a dead duck (Damn duck killer!) on my front seat and I was sitting right on it completely unaware with all my concentration on coolness. Mike was amazed that I could not feel his duck. I interpreted this as he did not like my Beyonce booty.

Lesson: Pranks are meant to be on April 1st and are not good methods for flirtation any time of year.

Heroin for the honeymoon

My honeymoon might kill me before I even get to attempt to book it. When you are poor you have no idea where to spend the money you do not have. The every night researching is causing more stress and anxiety than my wedding day. It has been several days since we have actually relaxed and zoned out. Sometimes the internet is like heroin without the added benefit of a high.

Should we go to Mexico to an adults-only resort and nestle in a suite with non-stop alcoholic beverages and no worries about our next meal or should we ditch the resort shit and go for the adventure in St. John and rent an intimate villa without the luxury, but with the multiple beach exploration? Lazy and ten pound weight gain, or adventurous and a liver?

All I know is that I want to have a great time. I want to further my risk for skin cancer and I want to honeymoon it with my new husband. I have been made fun of my desire to honeymoon it. Yes, we have been “dating” forever and living together for more than half of forever. We’ve established our lives together long enough to find expired medications and cleaning products in our apartment. However, I have not been a wife yet and have never had a husband before so yeah, I want to stay in a suite on our wedding night and not fall asleep or pass out and then I want to be romantic for a week.

Weight gain or liver? Looks like another night of heroin and then I might need to check into rehab. Yes, another vacation...