My house is falling apart. Not literally. But the housework keeps piling up and I have very little desire to do anything about it. Wait, scratch that… I do WANT a clean house. I dream of freshly dusted shelves and a spotless floor, of bathrooms with no mysterious stains. I fantasize about how nice it would be to have every dish clean and in its proper place. I toy with the idea of putting out bowls of fresh milk each night in hopes that friendly OCD brownies will scrub everything until it shines while I sleep.

But I don’t, because someone will kick over that bowl of milk without noticing and I’ll be left with a half curdled, half crusty spill to clean up. And therein lies the problem, I seem to be the only one who… not only cleans but… notices the mess building up around us.

I’m just so sick of cleaning.

This would be much easier if everyone would get the hell out of my house. School and work were blessings that I never truly appreciated, because when no one is home, there is no one to mess up the house. Especially with big male feet that drag in extra amounts of dirt, and big male hands that always seem to be sticky (what? why?!), and big male stomachs that seem to be constantly EATING! Wrappers, and dishes, and crumbs, oh my.    

Well, guess what, my dear family? We are all on our second shots. We are almost completely vaccinated! And I know, I know, everyone has gotten very comfortable being homebodies. We’ve got our routines down, and our electronic devices close to hand, and our butt grooves worn in perfectly. But the clock is ticking… AND YOU WILL GET KICKED OUT!

Or... you can get your butts in gear and clean up some crap. It's your choice.

Love, wg

P.S. I promise not to change the locks. Maybe. Bwa ha ha!

OK, so I know I said I was going to reduce playing games on my phone (and I AM! Really, I am,) however, at the reduced, allotted times I DO play I have been increasingly disturbed by the ads for other games that are playing on my game. (You followed that, right?) Especially the ads for Makeover Games.

I really feel like that should be followed with a dun dun DA! Or at least said in a voice of doom.   

These games' storylines center around girls receiving makeovers so they can catch the guy's attention. The girls in the ads are always mocked by other people and are shown as miserable until they get their makeover. In one of the games, the character is shown over and over getting dressed and then her male counterpoint judges whether she is dressed appropriately. The makeovers focus on getting rid of body hair, wearing certain types of makeup and clothes (anything outside a certain parameter is deemed a "fashion emergency"), putting on heels, etc. in a very narrow range of what is acceptable.  So... not only are the games teaching messages to girls that they are and should be judged on their appearance, then, the player herself, gets judged by the game on whether she did the makeover correctly? What. The. Fuck?

I took a moment when I first saw these ads to check myself. Perhaps, these ads are misleading and they're just to get people to download? Perhaps, there are other storylines in the games? But then I kept seeing ads for other games along the same lines.  Frankly, the ads are so off-putting I have yet to download one. I ALMOST downloaded one, just to check it out. Impartial journalism and all. But then I read the comments and many of them reiterated the sexist themes played out in the ads and more than one mentioned how the characters are told to get rid of their glasses! 

(Oh no. You don't fuck with glasses!)

One of the most disturbing things... almost all of these games are labeled for 4 years and up. I thought that we were in a new era of women empowerment? I thought we had left some of this crap behind. So why the hell are outdated, sexist, and repressive games popping up that are targeted to little girls, tweens, and teens?! Is this payback from some weird segment trying to hold onto patriarchal power? An intentional undermining? Because somehow this feels a bit like when the women's movement started to get rolling in the 60s and 70s, and suddenly there was ALSO a huge explosion in porn. (OK, ladies, you can go to work! But you're all nymphos or ball busters and no one will take you seriously.) But these games are worse because they are targeting children. The ads, in fact, tell girls that these are the type of games (and attention) they're supposed to want, even if they don't actually play them. It's conditioning them in restrictive stereotypes on multiple levels. And it's also conditioning them to normalize judgement in all its unhealthy glory.

So I have to ask... are there companies out there so fearful that the future is female that they have to tell five-year-olds they'll never be happy unless they dress a certain way?

I'm not paranoid if it's true.    

I just spent two and a half hours planting flowers. I kept waiting for winter rains to start here and it just hasn't happened (worrisome given our wildfires), so I finally went out front and filled in the scraggly, empty patches in my flower beds that, when it's raining cats and dogs, I AM PERFECTLY JUSTIFIED TO IGNORE! But, no rain, no justification, so off to plant I went.  

Sooooo... you know those TV shows and movies that always have some elderly lady happily gardening in her front yard? Like, almost every time you see her she's in her garden? Gardening all day, happy happy happy? I call bullshit on those images!  First of all, I know I'm getting older and I'm nowhere near elderly, however, I can no longer garden for long periods of time without seriously hurting! Like really, I should be doing an hour at a time tops, especially if it's heavy duty work.  My ass is already in pain from the stint I did today and that was "gentle" gardening. I'm sitting on a heat pad and just took two Aleve! 

Second, knees. Bending. Squatting. Getting up, getting down. I think people pay to have workouts like this. (Not me!) I basically hurt from my butt all the way down my legs.

Third! Those ladies are always adorably outfitted in light spring colors, with coordinating gloves! Sometimes, they are even wearing white pants. WHITE PANTS! Like grass and soil don't even exist! 

Fourth, I had dirt in my hair! Also, up my arms, all over my pants, and a smidge got up my nose. (Post-gardening tissue blow, am I right?) I wasn't throwing dirt around either, or shoveling, or tossing sod. I was sitting on a pad on the ground, planting flowers from a pack. Small flowers! I only had to dig small holes! My gardening gloves were covered in damp mud. Have you ever seen one of those gardening grannies on TV with muddy gloves? No. They're always perfectly pristine, in cute floral fabrics. Not, NOT dirt encrusted, stiff suckers that the rest of use. I mean, I know it's Hollywood, I KNOW it's all made up, but seriously people, have you never seen someone garden before?

I love my garden. I'm not going to stop gardening; I am perfectly aware of what's physically doable for me as I age. But geez, I'd just like to see a realistic version of life once in a while! Stop pressuring me with your images of pristine, elderly ladies who apparently kick ass in the garden! 

Show me a granny with an ice pack and pain killers, or better yet, a gardener, and we can enjoy our flowers together. Tired but realistically happy.  

That is all. 

_{It is so blazing hot here I feel like a cheese slice cut into the shape of a woman and melted onto my couch.  We don't have AC. Usually we deal with the heat fine because we're used to it but Humidity has decided to come for a visit. What the fuck Humidity? Haven't you heard of COVID?! You shouldn't be traveling. We don't want your sticky germs and sapping damp, thank you. Just because you don't have to wear a mask doesn't make you cool. Besides, this is California. We don't DO Humidity. (We do fire season. Duh.)}

_{That's something about the pandemic no one thought about... there would be nowhere to go when the weather turns hot! No movies, no malls, no inside dining. I could wander around Target for a couple of hours but even that has it's limits. I'm sure someone would yell at me eventually for standing in front of an open freezer door and breathing on the ice cream. Plus, I bet everyone without AC will have the same  idea. (Because let's face it, we have limited options and we're not that original.) And then as hordes of people come in to beat the heat, there will be socially distancing chaos at the Target!}     

_{I guess I gotta go old school on this... find a kiddie pool, fill it with ice, and park it in the front yard with my lawn chair and inappropriately short clothing.  That way I'll have the appropriate amount of space between me and my disapproving neighbors when I wave. All I need is wine in a cracked jelly jar and some watermelon seeds to spit. I'm looking forward to it already.}

I gotta tell you I'm not digging this menopause thing.  It's painful, lumpy, awkward, and odd.  There are also smells.  Years ago, I put together a whole list of the Things They Don't Tell You in Lamaze, all the silly, gross, funny details and shared experiences of pregnancy.  I'm half-tempted to start a new list for menopause.  Except I'm really hoping it'll be over before I have enough for a list.  Really, really hoping.  Who I am kidding?  I've already got enough; I just don't want to relive them. 

The symptom I'm currently enduring is my boobs growing.  Because, apparently, one out of five women's breasts get bigger during menopause!  Who the hell knew that?!  It never even occurred to me that could happen.  I believed that once you were done growing, except by pregnancy or purchase, your boob size was set.  But no!  At first I thought my girls were just bloating, like maybe I ate too much salt.  Then I thought my bras were worn out, that's why everything felt weird.  Then I got mad at the manufacturers for changing the design of my favorite bra because it used to fit!  Damn you bra manufacturers!  Just stick with the design already.  My ta-tas were sore and sensitive, too.  That's when I realized it was hormonal and I thought, "oh, well, the swelling will go down soon".  But it hasn't gone down.  I bought bigger bra sizes and they still didn't feel great.  In fact, some days I don't want to wear anything at all, except now I've got flotation devices bobbing all of the place.  Then I went and got professionally fitted.  It was the fitter who casually mentioned breast growth during menopause.  I still didn't think that was happening.  But my hooters kept swelling, everything kept hurting, it all just seemed out of place.  Finally, digging through the internet, I read up on it.  

One out of five.

The worse thing is how blind-sided I felt. It's not like they went over this in that puberty class in 5th grade. "As your body goes through hormonal changes you may experience sore breasts, mood swings, acne, possible weight gain, and painful cramping. Oh, and by the way, you'll go through all of that again when you have kids. AND when you go through menopause. Enjoy!"  That would have been helpful.  Or any class on menopause would be helpful!  How about just an informational luncheon? Older ladies coming together to share a new chapter of The Talk.  "Well, dear, things may start falling out of your twat now. Or it'll dry up. It's hard to tell. "  It's the stage that no one covers.  You'd think there would at least be a pamphlet on menopausal breast growth because one out of five is, you know, kind of significant.

And that's just the tip of the tender iceberg.  Everyone hears about hot flashes, insomnia, and mood swings, but there's a whole slew of other symptoms that I, at least, had never heard about.  Enough wacko symptoms to make you think you're going crazy.                

So if you've got a menopause story, feel free to share it. I'd love to be crazy with company.

            - wg