You, mere mortals, may look at my kitchen table and see only a mess.

It’s okay. Not everyone has “the gift.”

Because the message I read in the chips; however, is so important I’m going to share it with you today.

You don’t wanna mess with the force of the chip.

And no, that’s not me. I still can’t get all of the paint off from the balloons I had done for the hub’s birthday.

Busy contemplating the critical issues facing humanity–or the sore joint on my left pinky–I looked up into my rear-view mirror on my drive home from work and noticed a red car behind me.

Then I looked in my side mirror, as is my habit to check all mirrors while I’m driving (I’m so safe) and there was another red car on my left.

Then I looked to my right…another red car. And in front of me? Another red car.

I was surrounded by red cars!

Okay so government agents and crime syndicates probably don’t use red cars when going after a mark, but it was a little weird.

And then I looked up.

Yep. A black helicopter was flying overhead.

I’m not kidding.

Now I may not blog under my full name, but I don’t wear tinfoil inside my hats. Shoot, I throw away magazines and catalogs with my name and address on them. In the trash. Without shredding the information!

You didn’t know I was an international spy did you? Oh sure. I’m constantly evading convoys of red cars and black helicopters. It gets quite boring actually.

The whole suburban, working mommy blogger thing had you fooled didn’t it?

Did you know how much I adored you?

Did you know that all these years later I can remember specific moments we spent together as clearly as the crisp days they occurred.

Maybe the memories seem clearer than they are because I have photos tucked away in an album. There I am looking at you with a big smile. Or there’s the one where we’re playing not realizing we’re being photographed.

*sigh*

I had such a thing for older men then.

Or was it your twin brother Richard. It was always hard to tell you apart. Who knows. I was only five.

This memory is brought to you thanks to my friend Jennifer who was remember her own Robert today.

Way back in February I broke my ankle. You may remember the photo of the cast that attracted many an eastern European cast/braces fetishist to my site (thanks for the extra bucks my friends).

A physical therapist friend of mine recommended a terrific orthopedist to treat me. I loved him immediately. As the kid of a doc, I’m often hard to please when it comes to medical care, but he was personable and thorough and even cleaned my foot himself after it had stewed in a cast for six weeks.

Granted he missed a second break and a bunch of other soft tissue damage, but none of that was apparent on the x-ray. I still loved him.

His office staff is friendly. It’s easy to get in to see him and you don’t have to wait long in the waiting or exam room.

A virtual medical miracle.

But yesterday the love affair died.

Yesterday, at my three month check-up, we discussed some of my lingering pain and my continued inability to wear heels.

His answer?

You probably won’t ever be able to wear heels again. The area of your injury is affected every time you put your foot at that angle.

*blink* *blink*

Clearly, he doesn’t know that I consider Nordstrom’s Shoe Department the mothership. Clearly, he hasn’t seen my closet. Clearly, he doesn’t understand how wearing a great pair of shoes can make you invincible.

Clearly he’s not the doctor I thought he was.

Wonder how long this is going to take me.

Is this the most efficient way to assemble these?

This stapler sucks.

Dog chewing edge of box–well at least she’s not teething on my toes. Could be worse.

That box is a virtual cornucopia of fundraising flyers.

This stapler sucks.

Screw it. They’re stapled.

Shit, some Kindergartener is going to cut their hand on that staple. Do over.

Freaking husband. Convenient phone call while I’m sitting here with all this to do.

This stapler sucks.

Wonder if I should take that blogging gig. Interesting topic. Do I have time? Will I have anything to say? Will I need to research? Think I’ll take it. I’m not sure.

Wonder if the motion I’m using to lean over and sit back up counts as core exercise? It should. I can feel it. My posture sucks. If I sat up better, I bet it would count.

How sad is it that I’m considering stapling as exercise??

But I’m sweating. Okay–that’s cause I turned off the air.

This stapler sucks.

Still on the phone my mate? I swear it’s because you can still hear my stapler.

What?? You’re offering to help? Sure count and label these.

Bonus points to hubs for helping out.

Well it’s his kids’ school too. Damn right he should.

I’m a bitch.

Kinda fun hanging out doing this together.

Shit I’m not stapling fast enough.

Oh look and help from a four year-old!

I’m going to be here all night.

Thank god for the short attention span in four year old.

I must be close to done.

Hmmm. I could write a blog post about this.

This stapler still sucks.

What? We’re only through the 1st grade classes?!

And there goes the hubs.

I’m going to be here all night.

What shows do I have to set up on TiVo this season? I liked that Criminal Minds.

I watch too many cop shows.

Didn’t get many emails today.

I’m going to die alone.

This stapler sucks.

I’m officially old.

No, I haven’t turned 40–yet, but it’s probably fair to say we’re bumping hips.

No, it’s not that I found my first gray hair. L’Oreal already sends me an annual thank you card.

And no, it’s not because I can no longer tell you who half the people are in my high school yearbook who promised they LYLAS and wanted to KIT.

Nope.

The reason I’m officially old is that I rode the elevator today, and during my ride down 15 floors, wafting through the mysterious speakers that fill the space with ambient noise (where are those speakers anyway? and is do they play that music so I won’t feel so alone while I’m in there?) were the soothing sounds of George Michael–set to MUZAK!

At first I didn’t recognize the ditty, but something felt familiar. My mind kept wanting to make sense of the hypnotizing tones that seeped into my ears like alien life forms in their liquid state.

Then all of the sudden it hit me.

“Do do do da da da dada…Somebody tell me (won’t you tell me) why I work so hard for you.”

NOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Images of crooning along with the pre-bathroom-hole-poking-George as I rode down 4th St. with my BFFs are crystal clear in my head.

But I have to face it. It’s time to grow up. When the music from your youth is set to a Casio keyboard, some strings and a bass guitar it’s time to admit it.

I’m old.

“My God. I don’t even think that I love you!”

Baseball season is upon us once again (does it really ever end?) and as you know there aren’t many options for a girl when nature calls at the field.

I avoid the dreaded Port-o-Potties as much as possible, especially after the incident last year, but sometimes there’s just no choice.

We were down at the fields for a marathon afternoon and all of the sudden my breakfast came back to haunt me.

There wasn’t any time to make it home.

I found a relatively clean cabinet o’ ca-ca and went about my business. So many thoughts ran through my head as I was finding my way to sweet relief.

What if some kid forces the door open and everyone sees me with my pants down?

What if a long line has developed since I stepped in here?

Is the tank full enough that the next person will know I had the sour-apple-quick-steps?

As these totally rational and sane thoughts caused me to sweat a little, my eyes landed on this:

I HAD to know whose job it was to figure THAT out.

As part of my research (see what I do for you??), I made the most fascinating discovery–the PSAI–and boy is their website full of interesting information!

For instance, did you know that there are 1,400,000 portable toilets in use worldwide? That they call waste “effluent” (I’m kinda liking that word)? And that they have developed a Special Events Usage Guide?

I know, me neither.

Those portable sanitation people are some helpful folk.

To top it all off, the nice folks at the PSAI hand out the M.Z. “Andy” Dump–I mean–Gump Award which is a “lifetime achievement award honoring those that have improved the image of the industry and have created innovative approaches for sanitation needs through new and improved products and services.”

I want to party with these guys.

It started out as the most innocent conversation, but I was left with many questions.

A wad of rain-soaked clothes were left in my co-worker’s car resulting in a musty smell. He was telling me about the vast amounts of Febreeze he had sprayed in his car and was complaining that he could still smell the odor.

When I was younger we had dogs. We always used Lysol to clean up after the puppies while they were being housebroken. The puppies in my life pre-dated my children, and therefore my tolerance of poop, so I would often gag when I was forced to pick up the poop. The smell, the consistency, the little remnants left on the floor; I still associate the smell of Lysol with it all.

It was this I was telling my co-worker–that if I smell Lysol now I would swear to you that it smells like puppy poop–when he made an unexpected connection to my story.

Him: “Oh yeah. That’s just like when I smell someone who has on my jerk-off lotion.”

Me: *blink. blink*

It takes a lot to leave me speechless, but I definitely didn’t see that coming.*

*Heh, I said “coming”.*

So I let this information sink in–about five seconds goes by–and then it begins to happen.

I have questions!

Me: “You have jerk-off lotion? Is this special lotion? Do you only use it for that purpose or do you just use whatever you happen to have around? Can’t you just do it with a dry hand?”

And he actually began to answer them.

We work in a very small consulting firm, so this conversation is not as inappropriate or uncomfortable as it sounds. He’s in his late-twenties. It’s the 20-something boys I know who keep me hip to the whole single scene. Not that I don’t respect them, but I do sort of look at them like animals in the zoo–observing their behavior and being grateful that I live on the other side of the bars.

It was a bunch of young, male, former co-workers who taught me years ago about the prevalence of manscaping and the expectation of Brazillians for the women they dated when I still thought all that grooming was reserved for the porn set. Seriously, you ever think you want to be single again? Just talk to a bunch of late-twenties males. You’ll run home to your spouse at lightening speed.

Anyway, so he starts answering me.

Him: “Yeah. I haven’t gone without it for like 10 years. It’s nothing special, but I usually have two bottles, one in the bathroom for regular use and one in the bedroom.”

Me: “What if your girlfriend develops a sudden case of dry skin and sees the bottle of lotion by the bed and just starts slathering it on? Do you run to stop her?”

Can you just see that all in slow motion? “Nooooo. Not THAT lotion.”

Him: “Not at all.”

Me: “But then she’ll remind you of…um…jerking off?”

Him.: “Yeah! I know. That’d be awesome.”

Um. I don’t think she’d think so.

So now I have a challenge.

I have between now and our next holiday party in December to figure out a way to delicately suggest that she might want to bring her own lotion with her to her boyfriend’s house.

And I swear the next poor guy I see in the lotion aisle at CVS is going to be so sad he met me.

“So how do you decide which brand?”

“Are you brand loyal?”

“What if there’s something different on sale?”

“What features are you looking for?”

“Wouldn’t lube work better?”

“Do you prefer scented or unscented?”

I just have so many questions…

*For the record, I’m not a prude. It wasn’t that I was unfamilar with the concept, I just never thought that’s where the conversation was going to take us.

…but I came up with this on Friday when it was beautiful and sunny and 80 degrees and I still just thought the tickle in my sinuses was allergies.

I was enjoying a little sunshine during the workday on Friday when a woman passed me on the sidewalk with a fairly low-cut shirt. It was impossible not to notice the tremendous stretch marks on her chest obviously caused by the ginormous boobs she was lugging around.

I looked down at my own girls and silently thanked the goddess of discount designer shoes that I had never been that well-endowed. Gravity and two nursing babies have taken their toll and the girls just ain’t what they used to be, but by no means will they ever rest on my hips.

And that’s when I had a thought:

There should be a boob bank.

The gals with a little too much can make a deposit–in exchange for maybe an iTunes card or something–and the ladies who need a little lift or filling could make a withdrawl.

The world would be a happy place and we’d all be perfect C’s.

And the fact that this science doesn’t exist is just further proof that G*d is NOT a woman.