Brain Dump

My first-day-on-the-new-job jitters created some interesting thought-soup during the drive in this morning. Previously, my morning commute thoughts were a sort of mental to-do list, a pep talk for the day, and a mad scramble to try to remember the great idea I’d had in the shower – I swear there’s some chemical in shampoo that makes me think better. This morning’s drive was entirely different and actually led to me thinking, “I gotta write this stuff down. It’s a record of my mental decline.” A passenger in my brain – or in the car, capturing my too-frequent audibles – would’ve heard this:


“It’s pretty bright at 8:45. You can’t see the deer jumping out at you at 5:30; 8:45 is pretty cool.”
Note: my start-time today was 9:30, it was 6am at my previous job.

“I wonder if there will be traffic on I-64.”

“These pants will fit great 5 pounds from now.”

“I sounded just like Thom Yorke on that line. Creep is a great song.”

“When my brother had long hair, he looked like a blonde Anthony Kiedis.”

“I’ve only got one bottle of wine left at home.”

“Push the fader, gifted animator, one for the now and eleven for the later…”

“This bra is going to annoy me by noon.”

“Push the skinny pedal, dude!”

“I hate this radio station.”

“I’m going to be late. I should’ve left earlier.”

“What if I hate the people I work with? What if they hate me?”

“Aw, Jesus…it’s a chicken truck. These birds are late! ”
Note: there’s a Tyson plant nearby. I used to encounter these towering 18-wheelers loaded with cages of chickens at least 3 times a week, at o’dark o’clock. A bit of fun that I was looking forward to doing without.

“I wonder if my boss will be able to hear my squeaky shoe over the click-clack of my heels.”

“Is there an accelerator in that piece of shit Chrysler or are you missing all the toes on your right foot?”

“Geez – looks like a pillow fight in the slow lane.”

“I wish I was still in my pajamas. No I don’t.”

"Shit."

“Pass the f***ing Chicken Truck already!”

"Is there always this much traffic on I-64?"

“Those chickens are filthy!”

“OK, what do all these people know that I don’t know? Why are they all doing the speed limit?”

“Def Leppard are all really old now.”
Note: this is when I realized that I was losing my mind.

“Get OUT of my lane!”

“State Trooper hiding in the trees in the median…so THAT’s why everyone is doing the speed limit.”

“I always miss this exit.”

“My feet are starting to hurt already.”

“I get hysterical, hysteria, oh can you feel it…”

“That guy’s listening to the same radio station. No way I look that stupid singing in the car.”

“F***! I missed the exit.”

“My stomach is going to start growling in a half hour. Everyone will hear it.”

“If I was in the Volvo, I’d jump that curby thing and get off here.”

“I’m not cooking dinner tonight.”

"Shit."

“What should I wear to work tomorrow?”

“BIG pothole.”

“When is it my turn to turn?”

“No way everyone in this lot is a visitor. Employees must be parking here illegally.”

“Where are my Altoids?”

“I’m 15 minutes early. Now what?”

So, I lit a cigarette – who’s going to tell me that I smell like smoke, I work for Marlboro for God’s sake – pulled a notebook and a pen from my tote bag and scribbled down what had been running through my head. I think I may need medication. This is an awful lot for a brain to race through during what turned out to be a 20-minute drive. And Jim thinks we should carpool; he’s in for a treat!

Gravity

Global warming, el niño, la niña, blah blah blah. I’m beyond tired of hearing about it. Our local global warming proponents shut up for a while last winter when the Richmond area had about 3 feet of snow – a good 2 feet more than our average. Now, with the hottest summer on record, these same folks are jumping up and down and making a lot of noise again. OK, I get it, but what I really want to know is, when will someone call attention to the fact that the earth’s gravitational pull has gotten much stronger over the last, say, 4 years? It has, I swear it. What’s that you say? You need proof? Ok, if the gravitational pull has remained constant for the last 4 years then why haven’t I been able to find a decent bra?

I’m serious about this. For the last 4 years or so, I’ve been complaining about my boobs. My husband thinks I’m nuts, thinks everything is hunky-dory, but he’s a guy and guys are predisposed to think that boobs are great, especially when they get a fairly regular opportunity to have a personal acquaintance with said boobs. Let me tell you, though, from my constant acquaintance with said boobs, something ain’t right and that something can only be caused by gravity.

Now, I’m not about to say that the greatest pair of boobs in the world is gone forever, destroyed by an unspoken natural catastrophe. They were never great but they were good. They looked pretty cozy under a sweater, decent in nothing but a bra, and truly sexy in the favored-by-all-women posture: lying down, arms up overhead. And then they were struck down…literally…by this whole gravity thing that nobody talks about.

I may be the only one talking about the increase in global gravity but I’m not the only one who notices it. Bra manufacturers have steadily increased the amount of technology they use in their design and production. Over the years, Victoria’s Secret has gone from offering less-trashy versions of Frederick’s of Hollywood stuff to the spill-you-over-the-top Miracle Bra to their latest invention, the BioFit bra that offers cup-size-specific shelf support. Other bra manufacturers are relying on your own body heat to mold the cups into the ultimate fit for your boobs. Sounds like the Grauman’s Chinese Theater method – casting your boobs in nylon and spandex instead of concrete. Why all the innovation if there isn’t an underlying epidemic from the effects of increased gravity? Hey, technology – guess what? It still ain’t working.

Every bra I have tried, every last one, has failed me in one way or another. I’ve lifted and lugged and adjusted straps to the point that I’m gouging wedges out of each shoulder. I’ve been measured and poked and had my band snapped more often than junior high school. I’ve returned more bras than I own and I own more bras than Dolly Parton. I’m a prisoner to my underwear. I put it on in the morning and I swear I feel it strapped around me every moment of the day, poking me here or gaping open there, reminding me that I’m trapped inside of it. I’m more likely to peel my bra off in the car, in traffic, on the way home from work than I am to kick my 3-inch heels off my feet.

I am a trouper, though. I keep trying, hoping that someone has found a solution to the problem. Alternatives showed up when the world recognized that aerosol sprays contribute to the deterioration of the ozone layer so I figure that, someday, somewhere, somebody will figure out how to counteract the gravity problem and stitch up a bra that works. I ventured out again, just last week, and put my gravitationally challenged boobs in the hands of a “Fit Stylist” at Soma. It was a bit unnerving – Soma is part of Chico’s, the clothing company that doesn’t even use real sizes and there I was, shopping for something so exacting as to be ridiculous or even lethal if you fudge the numbers. The Fit Stylist was nice, though, measured the hell out of me, and spent a good bit of time talking to me about potential corrective actions; a good start for me, I’m all about root cause analysis, causal factors, and engineering errors out of a system. Then she started bringing me bras to try on and checking their fit once they were on – snap! In the end, I bought two bras that, while they’re not perfect, they’re pretty good. I’m doing as my Fit Stylist suggested – I’m wearing them and trying to get used to them. I think of it as breaking them in, kind of, like you would do with a new car. I’m driving them gently. And, as one tends to do with a new car, I’m checking myself out in the mirror frequently. I look down sometimes and wonder, “Who is that riding around in that shiny new vehicle?” My husband has decided that the new seats are “pretty firm” but he doesn’t mind because he’s a guy; I’m wondering if Soma and Tupperware have some kind of interlocking directorate.

In the end, I imagine that these bras will end up just as annoying as all the rest in my collection. It won’t be their fault, nor will it be the fault of my incorrect boobs, which, incidentally, I could have surgically altered for about $6,000, but I’d rather have a new stove and a new kitchen floor first. The real problem is caused by the annual increase in gravity and, until Al Gore responds to my urgent pleas, I’ll be spending my drive home with the top down, my seat reclined, and my arms up over my head. Unfortunately, I hear we’re in for another rough winter.

Every 7 Seconds...

In the midst of a recent conversation that included the phrase, “I was thinking about you all afternoon,” my husband handed me the topic of this blog. My first response to him was, “Yeah, yeah – I know, every 7 seconds...,” and then I stopped teasing him (for about 7 seconds) and really started to ponder this idea. Guys think about sex every 7 seconds? Really?

I have no idea what it’s like to be a guy. I can’t imagine knowing every football statistic or baseball box score or the name of every James Bond villain. I don’t know what it’s like to walk around outside, in front of other people, without a shirt on. Hell, I can’t imagine wearing underwear that just hangs off my hips and flaps around my legs; I prefer something with a little more reassurance. I listen to my son talking with his friends and I can’t understand how they can say the things that they say to each other and still remain the best of friends. There is such a huge difference in the separate worlds of women and men – the whole Mars/Venus thing – that it often feels like I’m standing in a room where everyone is speaking Arabic and expecting me to understand them. I don’t get them, well, I hardly ever get them, but, as I live with 3 of them, I think it’s the least that I can do to try to have a tiny appreciation of what makes them tick. Or, at least, what happens to their brains after every 6th tick.

For this, I turned to the best research subject in the world – my husband. He’s a guy through and through – an ex-high school quarterback who knows the stats of any sport that involves a ball, can quote Beavis and Butthead dialogue when appropriate – a real guy. A guy’s guy. He also has a Master’s Degree in Education and Human Development from George Washington University, loves psychology, and has a deep, sensitive streak in him. Combine his background and education with the fact that he’s my husband and is therefore required to answer my questions and I think we can agree that he speaks the truth and does so with some authority. So, for all you wives of husbands and mothers of sons who have ever wondered how it is possible for guys to think about sex every 7 seconds, here’s an answer from the other perspective.

Guys don’t think about sex every 7 seconds but they do think about us throughout the day. The thoughts just occur – zip! – as part of their stream of consciousness and – zip! – they’re gone just as quickly. It’s not something that they conjure up or deliberately shift their thoughts to, it just happens. Sometimes there is a trigger point but more often, there is not. Men experience a flash of memory, a glimpse of a moment from the past. And it’s not really sexual as much as it is sensual – the memory of our perfume or the way we sound. They generally don’t experience a split-second hallucination of a naked breast, for example, but they do think of the intimate moments between us and them – a touch on the back of their neck or a smile. What they experience roughly every 7 seconds is intellectual, not physical. From my husband’s report, they are conscious of every instance of these thoughts. And they say men can’t multitask…

Women think about sex, too, but I think we tend to dwell on it when it does cross our minds. We take a fleeting thought and build an entire scenario around it. We work it. We light the candles, we take the time to dress ourselves in what we think is our sexiest little satiny chemise, we put the music on, and we pour the wine. And then we move on to the million other things that we need to accomplish during the day. By the time we actually get around to putting our earlier thought into action, we’re kind of tired or we’ve sort of lost interest. Would it be better, then, to think more like men do? To have the thought of intimacy thrum just at the edge of our consciousness throughout the day? Sex isn’t always an afterthought for women but we sure wouldn’t win that argument in a court of law. I bet it would be a lengthy argument, though!

Now, for the creature known as a teenage boy, I’m sure the thought pattern and probably the frequency, as well, is a vastly different experience than that of an adult male in a stable, loving relationship. I have absolutely no desire to seek this truth, however, and am content with knowing that, at some point in their lives, the flashing neon “TITS” sign in the back of my sons’ brains will be replaced with the more satisfying knowledge that they are truly and deeply loved. I’m sure that, if asked, they would accept this theory with the proviso that the giver of that deep, satisfactory love has TITS.  This is no more than I could expect from them, at this time, but it’s comforting to know that their brains will mature somewhere within the same decade as their physical and emotional maturity.

So, while I’m still standing in a room of foreigners speaking a foreign language, I can glean the context of their conversation a little clearer now. I’ll give them credit for being more than the Neanderthals that the 7-seconds statistic suggests. I’ll look at them with a little more tenderness; I’ll cut them a little more slack. When my husband snickers, “Huh-huh, you said ‘Do It’,” during a conversation with the boys, I’ll overlook it, knowing that a variation of, “My darling, I love you,” has been playing in his brain all day. And when one (or more) of the boys replies, “That’s what she said,” I’ll know that the flashing neon sign will blink off soon enough. As for me, I thought about setting a stopwatch to ring every 7 seconds or so…but I’d probably throw the sucker against a wall within the first half hour. Instead, I’ll make a conscious effort to appreciate the love that I have in my life more frequently throughout the day. If I seem a little scattered, forgive me, I’m just trying to think like a guy.