Author: Michelle

Several of us had a very illuminating conversation about personal grooming the other day. There was comparing and contrasting of personal styles and preferences. Verbal comparing. We aren’t that freaky!

It ended with me worrying that I was not going to fit in with everyone else’s grooming choices and would probably end up in Mexican pubic hair jail after going through customs without a perfectly groomed landing strip. It’s probably what they really are checking for when the TSA makes you walk through the naked scanners. It certainly doesn’t do anything to protect us from terrorists.

Rick thought I should probably make sure I mention pubic hair in the blog, so here I am.

I do want to state for the record that I am 100% sober as I write this. It seems important to mention sobriety.

Why mention pubic hair at all?
Uh.
Rick asked me to. No, there was no blackmail involved.

No, I don’t do everything he asks me to.

You don’t think he’ll turn me in to the pubic hair police, do you?

This is how it goes:
One more failure to connect
With so many how could I object?
And you, what on earth did you expect?
Well, I can’t tell you, baby
When this is how it goes
–Aimee Mann/This Is How It Goes

Failure to connect is a recurring theme with me. I have just never been a people person. It’s a little better now, but I have to really try hard. My mother can sit and chat with someone for five minutes, find out everything about them, and walk away with them adoring her. Rightfully so, she’s fantastic. She also has a talent for connecting with people.

Me? I am miserable at chatting. I feel like I’m being intrusive if I ask personal questions and I’m just awkward in general around people I don’t know. Once I get to know someone, it’s better, but I am never going to be that universally beloved person that everyone wants to be around.

Thank goodness. That would totally ruin my solitude gig.

So how is it that I am going on vacation with a flock of other people for a whole week, some of whom I barely know? Well. I will be vacationing a little outside my comfort level, for sure. I may end up locked in the bathroom sobbing at some point, but if that happens, Chelle will keep every one away until my ugly crying face resolves and I get my black eyeliner back on straight.

I should warn her about that. It’s important to have a plan.

Maybe we should have an emergency drill.

If you believed they put a man on the moon
Man on the moon
If you believe there’s nothing up his sleeve
Then nothing is cool
–REM/Man On The Moon

Johnny take a walk with your sister the moon
Let her pale light in to fill up your room
–U2/Mysterious Ways

This is a pretty much verbatim transcription of what went through my head on the way to work this morning when REM and U2 played back to back and the moon set behind me.

I do believe we put a man on the moon, but I don’t really believe in a man in the moon. I like to tell myself there is though. Well, not a man. A woman. Why would it be a man, when the moon is so clearly female in all of her aspects?
Waxing and waning, as tidal and cyclical as any Earthbound woman. And you know what waxing and waning are, right? Her size changes throughout the month. C’mon. If the moon wore pants, at certain times of the month they might have an elastic waist. Female, clearly.

Nonbelievers like a flight of fancy as much as anyone. Maybe even more. We don’t have all that fantasy and magic making up a religious life, so maybe it leaks out in other ways. Like wondering if the man in the moon is a woman, and what she thinks when she looks down here.

I wonder where the moon is? Is it following me like it did when I was a kid? It seems like it did that more often then. We should pay more attention…it was always cool having the moon follow the car.

She’s up there, mixing us all up. Making us a little crazy.
A little?!?

There’s a reason they call us lunatics.
Do I need to explain that luna and moon are the same thing? Non word-lovers might not get that.

Word lovers might think it’s silly to explain.

Everyone knows that lunacy and the moon are connected because the words are related yeah? Or is it that the words became related because the moon caused so much lunacy? I don’t even play an etymologist on TV so how would I know?

By the way, if you put an N and extra O in etymologist, it becomes a person who knows all about insects instead of a person who knows all about words. Say NO to bugs.

I wonder if I’d have liked Andy Kaufman more if I’d been older when he started in on the wrestling. I never got it. Maybe I would have gotten it if I was older and weirder.

I should write this down.

Done.