attack of the giant insects

i live with a giant.

he was excited about the bathroom mirror when we moved into this house because he could finally see himself without stooping down like usual. and it's true, it must have been hung by a giant like him, because i can only see from the bridge of my nose up (and about two feet of air above my head).

because i didn't see the bottom of my face in such a long time, i finally found out exactly how many pretty black hairs grow out of my chin when left unmolested. it was awesome. (even more awesome was making the discovery in a restaurant bathroom and realising how long i had been walking around like that.)

life for a giant isn't all just fun and games playing tricks on midgets with mirrors, though. J clocks himself on the head with surprising frequency. it's not that he has particularly poor depth perception, or anything, it's just that things often come within one tiny, painful centimetre of being high enough for him, and the rest of us seem to fit in the world so easily that he ambles along hopefully, too, bonking himself in the noggin. poor monkey.

i may not be tall and slim, and i may have a beard, but at least i can't remember the last time i hit my head.

my thorax

yesterday a friend told me about a great sale, and, needing casual (but unstained, untorn, wax-free) pants, i trundled along to check it out.

now, i've been in the Bitter Barn with regards to pants for a long time. since puberty, in fact, when i grew a PERFECTLY NORMAL woman bum, acquired a waist, and suddenly discovered that mainstream, accessible clothing was no longer designed to fit me.

what is *with* that?

what is up with designing clothes that don't really fit anyone properly?

i've always liked wearing my pants low. i find it comfy and more flattering since i'm quite high waisted, so you'd think that the frenzy over 'brazilian cut' pants in the last few years would work for me, but it doesn't. it only works for tiny, narrow-but-curvy bums. on everyone else, these pants produce female love handles and an unflattering, square bum. i would know -- i worked in an open-air public market all summer and got to avert my eyes from dozens of teenagers a day, parading around with their baby fat bulging out from underneath this regrettable trend.

well, i won't have it any more. it's beneath my dignity and i've decided that low rise pants have become tiresome and old hat. i've gone the other way. at a vintage store i found and bought this pair of 70's sailor pants which are so crazy high-waisted that compared to some one in low-risers, i look like i have this humungous thorax -- you know, like an ant?

anyway, thorax or not, the sailor pants are workin' for me, and i maintain that if we all try, we can rise above (ha ha) the brazilian cut pants phase and relegate female love handles to where they belong in the dustbin of fashion history.

hey, that can is leaking worms!

i found this particular posting to be too whiny and rambling after the fact, so i've removed it.

cheers to all of you who actually slogged through it,
"The Whiny Rambler"

chicken humping

i had always believed that if a kid was old enough to ask a question, he or she was old enough to hear the answer. now i'm not so sure, what with tv and internet being as they are.

lately our little house has been full of complex issues touched on by some really good questions on the part of the resident ten-year-old. questions like, "if a man looks at porn, does it mean he doesn't love his wife any more?" or, "why would a kid's parents stop talking to him just because he's gay?" or, "is there *really* a phone number in the book you can dial to get a woman to come to your house and massage your wiener?", and "why do people think porn's bad?"

why indeed.

i mean, where do i start? religious conservatism? feminism? police statistics? and how do i broach the subject without giving the impression that nakedness, or sex, are fundamentally dangerous?

we chatted, and, in an effort to keep the conversation within the realm of what he's already aware of, i mentioned that some people's relationship towards sex is unhealthy, for whatever reason. (oopsies.) so he wanted to know what i meant, so i reminded him that some people find children, for example, attractive, and that that, as he knows, it totally inappropriate.

he nodded. (whew!)

then asked, "what else?"

(oh no.)

how do i avoid telling him that there are people in the world who like to hump chickens, without sounding like i'm glossing over something tantalizingly mysterious, dark, dirty, forbidden and perilous? i mean, he has the rest of his life to be a grown up and to avoid, or celebrate, (i suppose) chicken humping. in the meantime, i just don't think he has to know about it.

the problem is, i don't know how to be to make him not wonder how far things go. he craves absolute limits and boundaries. he wants to understand everything -- plus, i think in this case, he wants to have more fodder for pervy schoolyard information swaps with the other kids. i'm really not sure how to handle it.

so, again, if the kids are the ones asking, can you really give them too much information?