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the latest waddle:

good morning, wordpress - 10:36 a.m. , 2009-07-03

elaborate murder attempt - 2:56 p.m. , 2009-07-01

building a tractor in the basement - 10:42 a.m. , 2009-06-19

ask no questions tell just a few lies - 3:17 p.m. , 2009-06-09

my long lasting flavor really lasts long - 1:10 p.m. , 2009-06-04


2005-07-21 ... 4:17 p.m.

The sentiment behind campaigns like "Love Your Body" is undoubtedly noble, and in the "Angry Rant" section of my mind there is often a manifesto brewing about rampant fat-phobia, the disconnect between media image and real human flesh, and (most stridently) the accompanying weird American Puritan issues about food and idleness and control and women's voices. That said, there is no way I could ever love my body. I am not mad at my body; I don't hate the way it looks, and I try to appreciate the good things it does for me (like orgasms, infection-fighting, tastebuds that appreciate dark chocolate, and generally being a useful vehicle in which to keep my brain). But it is more of a "wary d�tente" situation than "love." As much as I would like to subscribe to some yoga-rrific holistic philosophy about the mind and body being connected, I can't help but see my body and my "self" locked in constant low-level struggle, like an elderly couple bickering on opposite ends of a plaid couch. (Um, I am not sure what the plaid couch represents in this analogy. Please to ignore the plaid couch.)

Trust is an important part of love, and who can trust the body? Always tripping over cracks in the sidewalk, getting paper cuts in weird places, getting drunker than your brain intended. Not to mention the true bodily disasters, like vomiting or cancer. Or how about how the body SUDDENLY BETRAYS YOUR LONG-HELD ASSUMPTIONS by revealing itself to be a TOTALLY DIFFERENT SIZE than previously thought? How about that? How about them fucking apples?

Pardon me, I am still a bit rattled. Yesterday I visited the Nordstrom Bra Lady, of story and legend. Truly, for me the only comfortable bra is no bra at all, but that does not quite work in the office setting, where bounciness and air-conditioning-induced nippleness are not good things. Plus, just about everywhere a girl turns there is a website, fashion magazine, or another girl evangelizing about how The Right Bra Will Change Your Life and Most Women Wear The Wrong Size and Oh How Good It Feels To Finally Be Lifted, Separated, and Supported. I have been skeptical, but being down to one even remotely comfortable brassiere, plus my sister's good experience in buying her complicated wedding underthings at Nordstrom, pushed me into giving it a try.

HERE'S THE TOO-MUCH-INFORMATION PART

Well holy shit. I am 33 years old and for my entire on-again/off-again bra-wearing life I have been a 36A. Once, during another period of bra dissatisfaction, I measured myself according to some online instructions and determined that I was instead a 38A, which was very bad news because this size does not seem to actually exist in manufactured-underwear-land. Then I go to Nordstrom, suffer the brief but intense humiliation of nudity and a retail clerk's tape measure, and receive the stunning news that I wear a 34B.

I am a B cup! Long-held self-images need to be revised! The mystery of how my bosom can be both larger and smaller than previously thought must be pondered! Now is the dawning of the Breast Renaissance, where everything we had been taught turns out to be wrong!

Still reeling from the shock, I ended up spending nearly $75 on three bras in my new size. And they are comfortable, or rather as comfortable as a bra can be. I feel much more contained, somehow, in these bras, which I guess is usually construed as the main point of bras, and on my first workday with my new breasts* I kept doing little hopping experiments in the fax-machine corridors---look how I jump about and still nothing really moves! (I really hope none of my coworkers saw these hopping experiments accidentally, although if they did I suppose they would just think that I am so damn cheerful that I jump for joy in secret exuberance. No one could guess that I was really test-driving my brand-new boobs. Could they?)

*(I persist in thinking of my actual breasts as "new," although really it is just their label that has changed. Mumbai is the new Bombay, 34B is the new 36A.)

THE DARK SIDE OF EVANSTON

I worked from home today and actually got quite a bit done. Although it meant depriving my coworkers of my breasts' presence, I have decided I like the telecommuting thing. I also got to take Nora to her last day of summer preschool, and hang out in Starbucks reading and typing while I waited for her. At one point these two guys at adjoining tables struck up a conversation that I was half-listening to, as it seemed like all the usual vaguely liberal hot air that strangers vent when they are being careful not to offend anyone or say anything too radical. Iraq is a quagmire, Bush sucks, subway terrorism it-could-happen-here, etc. I mostly agree with these sentiments, but the whole preaching-to-the-choir, nothing-new-here nature of these "discussions" bores me to tears, so I avoid them at all costs. Then somehow they started talking about Clinton, and one guy said, "I just can't understand why the leader of the free world would hook up with a broad who doesn't swallow."

(a) Whoa. Misogyny much? Quick glance around: am I in an Evanston Starbucks on a weekday morning, surrounded by mommies with strollers, or in a dank Polish bar on a Friday afternoon, surrounded by guys with union stickers on their hardhats? Is this a tall chai latte in my hand or a sweating bottle of Old Style?

(b) Wait a minute: is the non-swallowing of Bill Clinton's jism (I cannot believe I am typing this) the commonly accepted explanation for the stain on the blue dress? That had never occurred to me, or rather I guess I had never thought too deeply about the mechanics of the stain. But wait. If one were going to be fastidious enough to spit instead of swallow, surely one would spit into a receptacle, rather than drooling onto one's own clothing? I'm still confused.

(c) I was unaware that prestige/social standing went along with the spit/swallow thing. Is this covered in any sort of White House etiquette book? Is it okay to not swallow when giving a blowjob to the Chief of Staff, but considered imperative to take things to the next level when the dick in question belongs to the President?

(d) Where the blowjob-giver stands on spit-or-swallow is usually not discovered by the blowjob-receiver until the very last minute, as it were---correct? I find it hard to believe that Clinton gave Lewinsky some detailed questionnaire to fill out before the act occurred. So cut him some slack, Starbucks guy.

BETWEEN MY BREASTS AND THE BLOWJOB TALK, THIS IS THE DIRTIEST ENTRY EVER, SO LET'S CALM DOWN WITH SOME LINKS

These Japanese smoking etiquette signs are fabulous.

And I enjoyed learning that new paint could save my life in the event of thermonuclear war.

---mimi smartypants walks on the left, stands on the right.

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