Why I Am Not Disgusted By (and Actually Support!) Miley Cyrus's Nipples

Can I just say that it's weird so many people care about one woman's nipples? Are her nipples made of gold? Do they squirt the fountain of youth? No? Then shut-up with your obsessing, while I write this blog post about my obsessing over Miley Cyrus's nipples.

Dear Miley Cyrus,

You started out as a "good girl" (quotations used to mark the fact that I don't like this term, not that I don't believe you were and are a good person) on Disney channel, making millions spreading joy through your songs, cute outfits, and humor.

What happened to these cute outfits that used to cover your entire body like an Amish young lady? Why is it that people who loved your songs and humor when you were fully dressed can't enjoy it now that you aren't? Was this stripped off you as well?

Or is it the Female Nipple Factor?

The Female Nipple Factor (FNF, a term I think I made up, but I am probably wrong, and someone way smarter than me actually came up with it decades ago) is when a woman's breast is either almost-completely exposed or completely exposed to the general public. String bikinis, breast feeding, bras, clothing malfunctions—all of these can lead to the Female Nipple Factor. The Female Nipple Factor causes conservatives to immediately spread abstinence programs and cover their daughters in sweaters for the summer. The Female Nipple Factor leads to articles, news stories, blog posts (like this one), and random comments from people far away from the exposed nipple taking a stand about it.

Which is funny, because I don't hear many criticisms over Channing Tatum's or Zac Efron's exposed nipples.

Personally, I love that Miley Cyrus is wearing, and not wearing, what she wants, because men do this all the time. Men walk around streets, beaches, and sometimes malls completely topless, especially in the middle of summer.

Which is ridiculous for these reasons below:

1. Our nipples are more valuable than boy nipples.

If Miley and I, and every other woman, choose to have a baby and choose to breastfeed, our nipples serve an actual purpose. We could bring nourishment and life to babies through our nipples. Men, what can you do? Even Bill Nye said that male nipples are just residual when he was on The Nightly Show. Topless boys on the sand, your exposed nipples can never do any good to society. Your nipples will never amount to anything. Sorry. Miley's and my nipples are more important than yours. Our nipples are just flat-out BETTER than yours! Women have super nipples!

So, shouldn't we be able to keep our nipples comfortable in the summer heat, instead of covering them in a layer of bra and a layer of top? You shouldn't force our cherished nipples to get sweaty and overheated! Think about the future babies, feeding off practically-burning skin.

2. The male body is JUST as sexualized as the female body,

so DON'T give me crap about not wanting to distract males with our flesh. Have you not seen Magic Mike? Have you not seen the many, MANY movies were the camera slowly pans down a man's oiled torso to that year's sexiest pop song? Not only is this shown often, but it is accepted. It is so accepted that panning the muscular male torso can be done in PG-13 movies, so children are exposed to the sexualization of the male body, while simultaneously getting the message that the female body is too unclean for the same movie.

The media is not shy to show how male chests are sexy. I should know, I had a giant poster of Jesse McCartney's on the wall closest to my bed around the time I got my first period. To this day, I blame the overexposure to Jesse's pale, hairless body and beautiful voice. (I don't really. I know this is a natural part of my life as a female. I do not blame Jesse McCartney or the pre-teen magazine that created an enormous poster of his naked chest by combining six pages of their magazine.)

3. Nobody knows if breastfeeding in public is acceptable or not,

which is ridiculous! Let women feed their damn babies if they choose to breastfeed! You gonna make a baby starve? Besides, if you are SO terrified of that nipple, the baby's mouth covers it! If I decide to have a kid one day, and if I decide to breastfeed, I'm gonna breastfeed wherever and whenever my baby wants to be fed.

I'm probably not going to breastfeed, though. My nipples are very sensitive, and I blame you, society. If you would just let my nipples be exposed to the treacherous, blistering summer, maybe my nipples would be more prepared for having a human suck them dry. Yeah, if I can't breastfeed my hypothetical future offspring, I'm pinning it on you.

4. Equality

Everyday, young girls have to decide what kind of girl they want to be—clean or unclean—because their bodies are not respected by the media or laws. Being a woman is now the same as being dirty, if you are not a virgin. If you are a virgin, then you are considered momentarily clean, until you lose your virginity and become like all the other dirty, dirty girls.

Girls debate their clean vs. unclean identity before school each day while guys can rest their minds knowing that the only big debate they will have this morning is whether or not they can get away without taking a shower. (This statement is not an opinion that all boys smell. Just all boys of a certain age if they do not properly wash.)

An Atheist and His Pagan Daughter Walk into a Bar,

with a priest, a rabbi, and a duck. They all get drunk on PBR, and then the atheist decides to order a REDD's Apple Ale. He points it to the priest as he drinks.

The atheist says, "Do you remember this apple?"

The priest says, "Go to hell."

The atheist laughs and says, "You keep playing with that 'hell' toy until it breaks and no one believes you."

The priest puts down his bottle and raises his arms to the heavens.

He says, "How can you not believe in Jesus!?"

The rabbi mutters, "Jesus was just a bad Jew."

The priest says, "You take that back!"

The rabbi turns to the priest and yells, "He threw us under the bus!"

The priest yells back, "You threw him on a cross!"

The duck, while slurring, interrupts, "Quack. I much prefer the god Poseidon, quack."

The pagan cheers, "Yeah!" and high-fives/high-wings the duck.

The priest, in disgust, pleads, "Why can't you see you're wrong?"

The atheist turns it around, "Why can't you see you're wrong?"

The duck says, "Quack. I need to get back to the pond, quack."

The pagan has an idea. "I'm going to pray to the God of War that you all stop fighting!"

The atheist, the duck, the rabbi, and the priest look at each other.

"Then who will we persecute?" they all wonder.

"You can go back to the Muslims," the duck offers.

Everyone high-fives. "Yes!" they cheer. "Them!"

The atheist says, "But I'm still going to hate all of you."

The priest and the rabbi nod.

The atheist and his pagan daughter leave the priest, the rabbi, and the duck at the bar.

The priest turns to the rabbi, "Jesus was right, you know."

The rabbi looks at his bill. "$7 for a beer!"

The duck says, "Quack."

Short Blog on How Selfless My Boyfriend Is, & How Selfish I Am Part 2

Setting: This late evening in my bedroom. We just finished watching 50 First Dates, my boyfriend for the first time and me for the 50th time, and I was getting ready for my pre-SNL nap.

My boyfriend: I have a question for you, Jordy.

Me: (Silence, because I am trying to train my boyfriend to continue with his stories instead of taking unnecessary pauses)

My boyfriend: (After a pause) If we had a situation like you and I just watched—

Me: I'd dump you.

My boyfriend: You didn't even let me finish!

Me: I'm guessing.

My boyfriend: Anyway, if we had a situation like in the movie we just watched, where one of us lost our short term memory—

Me: I'd dump you. Look, I guessed right! Yay, me!

My boyfriend: What!? So, I would wake up in the morning, and not remember the days before, and think we were still together. . . .

Me: And I would get married to someone else and have kids, but I would continue to text you. If you wanted to hang out, I would just say I was too busy with work that day, and suggest the next day.

My boyfriend: What!? I would take care of you! I would support you and love you, and you would leave me?

Me: (Shrugs) You wouldn't know.

My Childhood Hamster Had Balls!

    When I was ten, I wanted nothing more than a cute little hamster that would follow me to school and around the house in a hamster ball. On my eleventh birthday, I thought this wish finally became a reality when my father took me to the pet store to pick one out!
    “I want that one!” I said, pointing to the smallest, most delicate looking hamster I could find. This hamster was like the pet-equivalent of me, but better—this hamster was a redhead! I had selected a tiny orange, black, and white one just so the hamster would match my favorite new name, Ginger.
    I don’t think I wanted a hamster so much as I wanted a Ginger. Really, the whole point of getting a hamster, for me, was to name it Ginger, because I love names. As Told by Ginger was the best cartoon at the time, in my humble opinion, and naming inanimate stuffed animals, dolls, and even select corners of my house was not good enough. I got a child-sized guitar, named her Maddie, and never played her. Then I got a normal-sized guitar, same thing happened, named her Sally. Sally is covered in dust in the basement, and Ginger is dead.
    But back to the story:  I needed to give a living thing a name. I needed that type of power, to mark a living thing forever. “You!” I’m sure I yelled like a dictator in that pet store, “are now Ginger forever! To everyone! And you can’t argue about it!”
    (On a side note, this is why I don’t want children. I only think I want a house full of children so I can name a house full of children and force their first hobbies on them. I just want to force a girl to forever be called Carolina and spend her early years playing soccer, and a boy to forever be called Troy and spend his early years learning the art of dance. And then resent me for all these decisions. And they wouldn’t be able to do anything to take these early decisions back!
    I’m a tiny, tiny, fragile little girl. This is my Napoleon complex.)
    At the pet store, the part-time employee in an oversized blue polo stupidly gave a tiny eleven year old (who looked seven) the box of live hamster to hold, while my dad helped me pick out a cage and accessories. In the end, I got a large, clear tub to stare at my hamster at as long and as often as I cared to.
    I couldn’t wait to make the hamster love me, as all pets do! We took Ginger home, set the hamster up in the tank, and I ignored the new edition to my family for the next several hours as my dad took me to a birthday hockey game.
    I think this neglect so early in our relationship is why Ginger got fat. That, and I stopped taking Ginger out to roll around in the hamster ball. It was fun at first, making Ginger roll around and around as long as I wanted in a tiny room, until I noticed that little brown pellets rolling around the ball, which could fall out the ball’s cracks for breathing (why do hamsters need air? Why?)
    Shortly after this, Ginger started plotting a hamster-sized escape. We put the large tank on my tall dresser, which Ginger learned to crawl up and down out of, and into my closet. There, Ginger nibbled on the feet of my oversized stuffed animals. Because it’s not like Ginger was fed enough (over-fed, ungrateful hamster.)
    When Ginger got very obese-ly fat, I saw my first pair of balls. Being eleven and prematurely narcissistic, I assumed my hamster was whatever gender I wanted the hamster to be. Nope, oops. Ginger was a George, and I learned about male anatomy (which was good, because my parents never got around to giving me the talk after my first period. I needed this lesson in biology.)
    I also learned about death. One day, when I got home from school, I did the normal routine:  cross the hall to my room, put the backpack on my bed, turn to head back out for a snack, but as I turned my head this day, I noticed Ginger/George’s tank was missing.
    “Ginger?” I asked the air above my dresser. I still always called George Ginger.
    “Dad?” was my next thought.
    “Yeah?” he asked, nonchalantly ducking his head in my room.
    I pointed my little finger to the naked dresser.
    “Oh, yeah, I had to take that out,” my dad stated. “The hamster died.” Then he left my room to go to second shift at work, having already had a productive day of letting his daughter know that death ultimately meant nothing. Life moved on.

Mix-Matched Socks and 10-Year-Old Bras

I’m just not together enough for matching socks. Matching socks are for people who haven’t completely given up. Matching socks are for people who actually pour their cereal into a bowl, instead of eating it with their fingers out of the box. Matching socks are for people who, when they realize they forgot to brush their hair that day, don’t just look in a mirror and say Hey, good enough! Most mornings, I just try to find the same type of socks (ankle socks, knee-highs, etc.) so my feet don’t feel weird.

I hope my feet are color-blind (I know they look color-blind.) That way they won’t lose self-esteem every time I put on one pink sock, and one green.

Sometimes, I’m pretty sure I have a couple matching pairs in the piles of boxes blocking my closet. I never unpacked from college. Before you say that’s understandable, I graduated last May, not this past December. I would rather sit around listening to music before work than dig through my dorm stuff for two purple socks. I can often find two blue socks, but they are always different shades. Close enough, right?

I get even worse. Today I was wearing one of those bras a shirt just can’t cover enough. With most bras, shirts still can’t hide the outline, but this bra outline really stuck out. I looked at myself in the mirror, and knowing that I had at least 35 minutes until heading to work, I tried to convince myself that I didn’t need to swap bras.

I think this problem was because this bra was so old and the wire was bent. This was the nearly 10-year-old bra I said I threw out in previous posts (I didn’t because I’m a hoarder. Who knows when I am going to need it? Aren’t women supposed to pass training bras down to their children? No?)

I eventually swapped bras because I realized Did I really want to be this lazy? Even though the answer was an obvious Yes!, I didn’t want others to know I was that lazy. Also, because I was actually wearing matching socks today. Sure, I only had matching socks because I found a pair last week and haven’t taken them off since, for fear of never finding a matching pair again, but nevertheless, I had matching socks. I was together enough to swap out the 10-year-old bra too. Just not together enough to throw it away yet. . . .

LinkedIn Updates

Why does everyone think they are good at social networking just because they have a smartphone? I receive one email a day about my LinkedIn connections adding new skills, and one of the skills is almost always social networking.

Why No One on LinkedIn is Actually Good @SocialNetworking:

1. You have 80 connections and half of them are from strangers trying to get more connections or scam you into taking a temporary, part-time job doing “social media marketing” for their “start-up” company, i.e. spending your afternoons and evenings trying to scam others into trusting your new company.

2. You, like me, just graduated from college. Networking in general in the real world is not like networking in college. It’s not the same as your school constantly throwing networking events to help you “connect” with other professionals, i.e. harass the few alumni the school could bribe into attending this event (suspicious about how many times the name of a particular section in your campus library changes?)

3. If you were good at social networking, or any networking, you would have a better job, at least if you were good at social networking on LinkedIn. If you were good at social networking on Match or Tinder, you would have a better boyfriend. And if you were good at social networking on Instagram or Twitter, you would be Kendall Jenner. Are you Kendall Jenner? (Oh, wait, yes? Wow, Ms. Jenner, I’m so flattered that you read my blog! I love your hair, BTW.)

I say this as someone who probably has social networking listed as one of their skills on LinkedIn, but is too lazy to check. 

Fun with Childhood Bunk Beds

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Discovering You're a Narcissist Through Hoarding: A Weirdo's Tale

    I’m certain I’m a hoarder. Last month I decided, again, to throw away all unnecessary things from my room. I then threw out one bag of actual trash—plastic boxes from toys I didn’t have the strength to discard when I opened them. Years ago.
    I keep every scrap of paper I wrote one line, a few words, on. This excludes most college course notes, unless there was a doodle or the middle of a poem. I have two loose-leaf accounting binders in the corner by my door. I am not an accountant and I never had any desire to account anything, but there they are. Waiting, but I’m not sure what they are waiting for.
    A pile of newspapers I have never read from my childhood rests in front of my closet, blocking passage to most of my clothes, because when I was in high school I liked to think of myself as the kind of kid who read newspapers. One Journal Star features a large cover picture of the Jonas Brothers, when they came to the Civic Center for a concert. Concert tickets were my birthday present, and I kept the newspaper as a memento of the time I picked up a newspaper featuring my favorite band at the time, and I never read any of the articles, even the one about the concert I was going to see. This was my fifteenth birthday. Next month will be my twenty-third.
    I thought I deserved a change from this life of nonsensical papers and student-less accounting books, so I bought that famous book about cleaning up your life—The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up—and I sat it on the floor by my childhood bed. The next day I awoke to better my life and read it, but the book was covered by a mass of forgotten clothes that fell off my bed. I didn’t even know I had these clothes on my bed. They were always covered by my blankets, probably since the day I brought them home from the mall. One shirt still had its tag, and spoiler alert, I never read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. At least now I know why my feet were always so warm.
    So instead, I went to Barnes & Noble to buy another book. After spending too much time flipping through a book of Hillary Clinton haikus, I made my way to the psychology section and looked at books for my hoarding anxiety. I figured if I fixed my anxiety about being a hoarder, the hoardiness wouldn’t matter because I simply wouldn’t care anymore. Instead of being free of my clutter, I would be free of myself.
    Suddenly, as I skimmed these covers, telling me how anxious people can be, I became anxious about my anxieties, and then I got angry that my anxieties made me anxious.
    Luckily for me, what did I find a few shelves below? Anger management books! Automatic relief was followed by the realization that no, I wasn’t relieved. These books didn’t make me feel any better, but I journeyed to the next bookcase, where books about changing your mood and feeling good were held. The designer of the psychology section must understand me very well, and saw how I would seek books about anxiety that would make me angry, and then I would find no relief in anger management, and I would need to learn to feel good again, if I ever felt good at all.
    On first observations though, I don’t think this book arrangement worked, because my first observation was that one of the men on these read-me-and-be-happy books was nearly ugly, and I didn’t know how he could ever be happy.
    Maybe this case was built for people like me, who think those thoughts, because the next shelf had books about dealing with narcissism, and reading about those self-loving freaks made me realize that I finally found home.
    I’m a writer. I’m a writer who used I 51 times so far in this post. I (52) choose to write non-fiction because I (53) believe that I (54) am the greatest character I (55) could ever come up with, so now I (56) know I’m (57) a narcissist, all because I (58) didn’t want to be a hoarder anymore.
    The lesson of this story is to never, ever, clean your room (wow, I (59) used your! How good for a newly-found narcissist?)
    Now I’m (60) going to go stare at myself in a mirror. I I I I I (65)

Short Blog on How Selfless My Boyfriend Is, & How Selfish I Am that I Can't Even Lie to Him About What I Would Do if I Won the Illinois Lottery Jackpot, & this Title is Longer than the Post

My boyfriend:  If I won, I think I would give each of my friends one million dollars.

Me:  That's stupid, don't do that.

My boyfriend:  Why not?

Me:  Because it's stupid.

My boyfriend:  Why would I ever need more than $10 million dollars in my life?

Me:  No, that's still stupid.

My boyfriend:  I would pay off all my student loans, and your loans too! Then we can both be   debt-free.

Me:  Aw, that's really sweet, thank you. You should buy a ticket now.

My boyfriend:  What would you do if you won that much money?

Me:  I would pay off my student loans, too.

My boyfriend:  What about me? I would pay off your loans!

Me:  I would pay off...my sister's loans. . . .

Doing My Boyfriend's Homework Because He Dates Me for My Sexy Brain, and another story

I’m the nerd who does my boyfriend’s homework now. He’s an English major, so if he doesn’t understand how to find meaning in an abstract poem, or if he needs help creating a lesson plan, he sends them to me. I then stay up late with his assignments, tucking myself into bed after sending his homework off as an attachment, also safely tucked, in an email to my boyfriend. What I’m saying is that his homework and I go to bed together more consistently than my boyfriend and I go to bed together.

My boyfriend pushed off going back to school until after I graduated from college, and at first I thought this was a money issue. No, it was an I-need-to-make-sure-Jordy-has-time-to-do-my-homework issue. Sometimes I think I use him for his car and he uses me for my brain. Neither of us use each other for our bodies. Trust me.

As I sat there last night, creating my boyfriend’s first lesson plan for him, I realized I never considered becoming a teacher. Really, I didn’t, which people find odd because most little girls who enjoyed school as much as me have considered becoming a teacher (for the record, I did not enjoy school at all. I just liked getting made fun of by my fellow students better than getting yelled at by my siblings. Life is a real bitch for a badass middle schooler.)

The whole “teacher” thing stopped being appealing to me when me and my older sister used to play school with our American Girl dolls (yes, we were spoiled, we had American Girl dolls, plural.) My sister, let’s call her Satana, was always the teacher. I could be the teaching assistant if Satana felt like being nice that day, but mostly I was the annoying mom who wanted to be involved in her children’s schoolwork. The mom who insists on sitting in on class. The mom Professor Satana hated—so why did she play with me?

Because my children got F’s. Straight F’s. According to my sister, the teacher, Satana, her dolls were all A++ geniuses while mine couldn’t figure out simple math, or how to construct a complete sentence. My dolls made her dolls feel VERY good about themselves. Written on my dolls’ papers were words like dismal or disappointing or lack of originality. Satana’s dolls got Perfect! and Good work! So much better than those loser dolls on the reject side of the classroom, with the over-involved mom!

Her dolls were just in grade school, but they spent their free time working on Harvard and Yale applications and going to Mensa meetings. My dolls created mud pies in the yard. And then ate them. My dolls were idiots, apparently. I did not raise these dolls well.

And now my sister is a teacher in Bulgaria (I know, right?), close to the boyfriend he met in Romania. His name is Martin, and that’s a whole other story. Who goes to Romania and meets a Martin? Who works at a call center for Microsoft? I could’ve introduced her to seven Martins here in Peoria! But again, that’s a whole other story for a different post. This post was about Satana killing any desire I would’ve had to become a teacher. And me being a nerd who does my boyfriend’s homework.


*Note, if you had a similar situation with your older sister, or if you liked the blog, or had any feeling really, please comment!

When You're Almost 23 & You Look 12

I'm pretty sure that physically, I am still a few years from adolescence. I mean, I got my period almost 10 years ago (very light flow these days, should I be concerned?), I improperly fight zits (I'm very lazy and barely wash my face, but I do save time for washing my face by skipping brushing my hair), and I have stubbly body hair everywhere (also a very lazy shaver.) But body/curve wise, nothing. I can still fit in my original training bras, which I finally threw out last week due to pride and their formerly white, now grey color.

This is all funny because my boyfriend's last name rhymes with pedophile, so his friends naturally tease him about this. This is actually the one thing that really annoys my boyfriend, so I hold back that going on dinner dates with him does remind me of a dream I had when I was five.

Of course, I hold back to him, but I will tell the general public. That's what the general public is for.

It was my first dream about dating. I always had crushes (my first two were in preschool, and I made the teacher blush by being VERY flirty), but this dream was like my entrance into the world of romance (but I wouldn't be kissed until 10 years later, and I don't even want to tell you how many years later until I lost my virginity.)

I was wearing one of those romantic, breezy dresses from old movies. It almost reached my ankles and I could twirl widely in it. I think the dress was blue, or some other color that matched my eyes.

Since this was my first dream of a date, my unconscious made sure I was somewhere comfortable, and dream me started walking to the living room, where my date, Chuck E. Cheese, was waiting.

Chuck E. Cheese was in a black tux, and a swarm of other giant fake mice circled around us, to watch my very first dance, in a fancy grown-up dress, with Chuck E. Cheese.

When my boyfriend and I get pizza, I sometimes think about my first dream date when I was five. When he takes me to fancy dinners, I think of the dress I wore in that dream, and how I am still basically playing dress-up. And when my boyfriend leans in to kiss my goodbye at the end of a date, when he hasn't shaved his face in awhile, I think of how furry Chuck E. Cheese was, and I wonder if my five-year-old unconscious had to deal with the mouse's face tickling me too.

My boyfriend would hate this constant comparison.


Note:  if you liked what you read, or are a regular reader, please comment and share your thoughts below! Also, share any weird five-year-old dates with Chuck E Cheese. Or is that just a me thing?

Bringing Children to Work**

I wonder if Bring Your Child to Work Day was discontinued. It seemed really popular in TV shows in the past, but I never had one. I'm assuming educators must have seen the flaw in their plan.

To them, it was a day they didn't have to do any teaching, and they still got the joy of ruining every child's evening by making the kids write a paper about their day. Win-lose, which is the ideal scenario for anyone who has to deal with little "gifts from Heaven" all day, right?

But here lies the flaw:  there are approximately 400,000 women in America who are strippers, and one strip club regular could spend $50,000 a month.*

I can just see how Bring Your Child to Work Day would work out in some reports across America:

Father enters strip club with his middle-schooler son.

Father:  Son, welcome to my office!

Scantily clad waitress seats them at a table.

Son:  I don't think I can write my report on this.

Father:  Sure you can! This is where I conduct all of my business meetings with potential male partners!

Son:  And potential women partners?

Father:  Don't be silly, Junior!

Father and son order food.

Announcer:  I hope you are all ready, because taking the stage now is our main act, Diamond! And, as part of Roosevelt's Bring Your Child to Work Day, her daughter, Chastity!

Diamond, a professional stripper, and her daughter come out on stage, wearing matching bras and panties.

Announcer:  Isn't she cute? A round of applause for our future leading lady, Chastity!

Son:  Dad, that's the girl who tutors me in math.

Father:  See? I knew you could find something school-related for your paper here! Oh, Diamond! How about some father-son lap dances before my business partners get here with their children?

The end.

On a side note, I also wouldn't want a Bring Your Child to Work Day at the hospital (I'm talking to YOU, Kitty Forman from That's 70s Show, who probably shouldn't have brought your son along on your nursing route—though, at least he was a junior in high school):

Bring Your Child to Work Day:  The Hospital

Father, kneeling down to his elementary school son.

Father:  Son, today you get to help your father put a titanium device into someone's teeny, tiny wrist!

Son:  Oh, boy! Can I play with the device first?

Father:  Oh, sure! We are supposed to sterilize these, but how does your school expect you to learn about my job if you can't finger, drool on, and throw around this internal fixation device before I put it in someone's body, hopefully for forever?

I'm sure that would work out well.

*Note, this blog post was NOT intended to insult any readers who strip professionally. I'm sure many women enjoy stripping, while there are others who are doing what they have to do to provide. I have nothing against people who choose to strip professionally.

**If you like what you read, or don't, please comment and follow (or not follow, if you are one of the don'ts)!

Awkward Sleepovers in Your Possible Future In-Laws' Basement

It all started with the sound of flapping wings above my grown boyfriend's futon in his parent's basement (his bedroom.)

 "What is that?" I ask, astonished. It is 9am in the morning and I grab my 25-year-old boyfriend's arm. This scrawny white, nearly hairless arm across my chest is supposed to save me from whatever bird or bat I think is about to fall on us and claw my eyes out.

 "It's just a rat in the ceiling, relax," my boyfriend says and goes back to sleep. Because the phrase it's just a rat in the ceiling, relax always calms us ladies down. Every time, guys. Remember that.

I then spent the next hour listening to the same flapping sound, convinced that it was a rat with wings (so a bat, I was right) that would fall through the ceiling and bite me, trying to eat its way through my skin (thanks, episode of Game of Thrones!)

Then, the sound stopped. And I got suspicious.

Or maybe it started when my boyfriend took me back to his (parent's) place the night before, and his roommate (friend who's fiancé's parents kicked him out for being a slob) was already asleep. And the smell of half-grown men after a full day of work hit me stronger than it ever did before. Sure, I always knew not to go nose-first towards my boyfriend's balls after he was working, but the tiny basement room had the strong scent of two men's smelly balls all over the place.

Since we couldn't wake the new roommate who was sleeping on the floor directly by the futon, my boyfriend went on the internet and I read a book, completely ignoring each other until 2:38am, when I read 58 pages and decided to go to sleep. And my boyfriend stayed up on the computer instead of joining me. Because we are romantic.

When the cock-blocking roomie left for work in the morning, we put Netflix on and I watched Spanglish because I have a weird thing for Adam Sandler. I don't even like most of his characters, or his singing on old SNLs. His character usually isn't my favorite character in a movie, except for Spanglish, but I have a weird thing for Adam Sandler, and when I have a weird thing for a particular actor, naturally I want to share this with my boyfriend and make him watch a movie with this guy and spend the whole time comparing my boyfriend to the actor. Because I respect my boyfriend's self-esteem and feelings.

And it all really started because I am a morning person. I like to brush my teeth, get dressed, and finish a whole day's worth of tasks in the first couple of hours in a day.

And because my boyfriend's basement-room doesn't have a door, and his parents decided Hey, do you know what we should do while our son has his 22-year-old girlfriend here? We should clean the room directly by his bedroom. I mean, have you looked at our son? It's not like he has any game anyway.

So, while I want to go to the basement bathroom unseen to get ready for the day, his parents are discussing the cleaning outside my boyfriend's nonexistent door.

"I need to get ready for the day," I whisper to my boyfriend, hoping he knows the magic words that will make his parents suddenly realize they need to go upstairs and clean their own room.

"I know," my boyfriend said as he reached over, grabbed my hand affectionately in understanding, and puts my hand on his balls. So we resume watching Spanglish while I squeeze his balls and his parents are cleaning his storage room, basically connected to his room. The room where I was squeezing his balls while watching Spanglish.

Eventually, I HAVE to get ready for the day. So I walk to the bathroom, first having to pass both of his parents while wearing my Hello Kitty jammies and carrying my overnight plastic bag.

After removing the used pad from yesterday’s underwear and stuffing those period panties in my plastic grocery bag (so, to be fair to his parents, my boyfriend wasn't going to get any action anyway), I realized that the trashcan is OUTSIDE the bathroom. Because boys are gross and apparently don’t need trashcans in their bathrooms. And apparently because even though each time before I spend the night I ask my boyfriend to put a trashcan in the bathroom, he never gets around to it.

So I walk out of his basement bathroom, where his parents could see me, holding a rolled-up pad in one hand, in my fancier, Hello Kitty-less daytime clothes, and toss it in the garbage right outside the storage room his parents are cleaning.

Now, I am typing this while watching inappropriate comedy specials on Netflix as my boyfriend and his dad play ping-pong in the now-clean storage room.

Short Blog: Stories from an Atheist's Daughter

In one of my poetry workshops in college, I felt left out. I was one of the only people who did not come from a religious background, and I could not draw from it. I was the Atheist's Daughter who wrote about how she didn't understand religion, which got laughs. And I'm the kind of person who would continue beating any old joke with a sledge hammer until it dies for a laugh.

I wrote about how church service was like a scripted play (because of the nice handouts with lines they give the sinner children of atheists) and how it took me fifteen good minutes of talking to some blond on campus before I realized he was a pastor in training and was trying to sell me on his church. And he was dressed in black with the white little square over his Adam's apple. And I'm not even sure what form of Catholicism/Christianity he was talking about. And he talked for 40 more minutes with his pastor in training buddies that popped up when they found a sinner who was stupid enough not to run from them.

I began to study religion to write more about how I didn't understand it. I bought a Bible and put it on my bookshelf, between my Qur'an and my Wiccan spellbook. I like to imagine that they get along, reading each other's passages to pass the time.

Through my studying, I began to realize that if God was just someone's neighbor today, that neighbor would probably call DCF on his ass. He must have drugged Mary in her sleep through the use of mirth or some other B.C. drug, and raped her until she was with child JUST so the child can die at the stake many years later.

I also never understood Noah's Ark. Like, if God flooded the Earth because he was so disgusted by human beings' behavior except for Noah's family, and he NEVER did it again (like he promised), then how messed up was society back then? Look at us today, God, look at us today! Was it worth it?

When I Had 2 Roommates

I am a recent college graduate, I live with my parents, and I often think of just last year, when I had a student apartment with two other senior girls. Three single gals (well, actually I haven't been single in the past three years, but sometimes I forget and momentarily think I am single, then realize that no, I am not single like them) painting the town red (but our town is already red because of all the shootings that happen here.)

What was it like being three single gals, living it up in an apartment in Illinois, two and a half hours from the only cool place in Illinois? (No diss to my man Abe, I'm sure Springfield was cool in the day of horse-n-buggies and two-feet tall top hats.)

Here is one of those priceless scenes of three wild and crazy gals I remember to this day, one year later:

Me: So, I go into the bathroom, minding my own business, doing my thing, you know—I won't go into the details, YOU ALL KNOW WHAT WE DO IN THE POTTY, DON'T LIE, GIRLS!—but I was there, on the toilet, and I hear a knocking on the door.

Roommate 1: Will you be out soon?

And I was like: Um, yeah. What did she think? That I was leisurely reading and doing my homework in the bathroom, two feet from the kitty litter boxes she never cleans out? Yeah, the best place to spend my spare time.

Roommate 1: Good, because I need to hang up my laundry to dry.

Me: Still using the bathroom and dumbfounded—Why don't you just use the dryer? 

Roommate 1: Said in disgust— They're my delicates! I can't put them in the dryer, they will be ruined.

This was one of the times I noticed the difference between me and Roommate 1—I didn't have delicates. I had $5 Wal-Mart packs of Hanes underwear and five-year-old training bras that I never grew out of. (On a side note, that is why I hate the term "training bra," because what were they training me for? To girls like me, they are just regular bras that fit much better than those I can find at the fancier local Target or Kohls.)

And I put these $5 three-packs of flower-speckled undies and training bras in the dryer. And then eventually they turn from off-white to gray. And my boyfriend deals, clearly because we never had the same type of sex life as Roommate 1.

So Your Boyfriend Thinks You Are a Toy

I'm a little person. I have porcelain doll-like skin (when I am not suffering from the adult acne mentioned in a previous post), I'm only 5' 1", and I weigh... nothing. Light as a feather, stiff as a board was based on me because I am only 100 pounds and I'm stiff due to scoliosis.

But none of this is the point of the blog. Due to my small, doll-like appearance, I have begun to suspect that my boyfriend is only interested in me because he thinks I am a toy. Here are my reasons for thinking this:

This is what his room looks like:

Toys.

Toys.

And more toys.



Now, I know this doesn't necessarily mean that my boyfriend thinks I'm a toy. He just likes toys. But let's look at this picture again:

A little blonde fairy boy with shirt hair and a green dress. 

A few months ago my boyfriend convinced me to cut off most of my hair and get a pixie cut.

And dye my hair blonde.

And then he got me a green cosplay dress.

And this is what I look like:

I'm just another Link doll!

He also went crazy when this was my Halloween costume last year:

And he likes getting me other toy accessories. You know what I am talking about; when Barbie comes with a teddy bear, or when a large teddy bear comes with a smaller teddy bear.

Unless I give my boyfriend a specific book or piece of jewelry to buy me, all he will buy me are stuffed animals.

More stuffed animals.

And more stuffed animals.

And then, instead of sending him selfies of myself, he enjoys selfies of the toys he buys me:

And I know I'm just another one of his toys.