Not So SJ Anymore

I was the queen of short shorts in high school. Honestly, I didn't understand the concept of dress code and short lengths (to your fingertips, ladies!) and how they applied to me. Here's the rule: Your shorts had to be longer than your fingertips, plain and simple. Every single time I wore shorts to school (and every single time I got in trouble for them), I'd exclaim that "I have long arms and short legs! They don't make shorts that long!" It is true; I do have long arms and short legs. It isn't true that they do not make shorts that long. I just didn't want to wear them. Therefore, most of the time I wore jeans to school, though I had plenty of opportunities of sitting in the principal's office or getting sent home for my wardrobe. Every single one of my friends was capable of complying with the code, but not me. I always laugh when I hear the Mase (90s) song where it says, "I'm the reason they made the dress code." I smile

There are several things that have made me give the side eye since I've become a mother to a girl. First, there's the concept of leggings as pants. Not even the "athleisure" type of leggings; no, I'm talking about straight on I can see your pantyline run-of-the-mill cotton leggings. I know it's a thing. It still drives me nuts. The second thing is really something that has bothered me for most of my life-- the concept of aiming a product towards a woman through marketing. Seems to me, recently, that aiming towards women isn't enough; now we must market a product to certain types of women and girls.  We were at Walgreens the other day playing the never-ending game of Things We Need to Do Now That School Has Started. This round involved sports physicals. I was walking down the aisle when something caught my eye: tampons. Not just any tampons, but tampons for "athletic" girls. Would someone please tell me how a tampon could possib

Several years ago, I was in the teacher's break room at the School We No Longer Discuss. Several teachers were in there, having lunch. I overheard one teacher (a lady who I really didn't like socially, or even as a human being because she was a stuck up B who still wore embroidered sweaters and not even ironically) discussing how she couldn't wait until her kids would "leave the nest." Like...Ugh, I'm so sick of my kids, she said. I won't cry when they leave. (We're not even talking about adult children; these kids were still legally minors.) (Warning: This post goes nowhere. Even I know this.) I'm a bit burned out on life today. Not by my kids, but just everything. Even my therapist is annoying me right now.  Might I point out how ridiculously entitled it is to say those words about therapy? Yes, I know and it kills me but we're keeping it real, folks. Me: I don't want to spend $400 in gas a month to go across town to some activity

When my kids were very little, I had a lot of trouble functioning throughout the day. I was very young myself and having eight or nine hours with two very small people tended to throw me for a loop. I did all sorts of crazy things to keep them entertained (Painting with pine cones! Sitting outside the library and reading ALL the books we picked out! Riding bike to the pool!) but, still...that's a lot of time to kill. My husband suggested we get a schedule. Have a set plan for every day. Of course, my being the idiot that I am, I took it extremely literally. (Why I have a penchant for to interpret things in a literal sense is lost on me.) From 9 to 9:30 we play puzzles! From 9:30 to 9:45 we color! Things like that. Except...at 9:15 we were done with puzzles and the colors were missing and OH MY GOD WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE HERE. Quick, hurry kids, someone snap a picture of Mom so that she looks good in the photo that will make the news. Oh wait, no, I am still wearing a pa

One of my favorite things about spending my childhood in the 1980s was how DIFFERENT things were back then. We lived in a small town in far southeast Texas, just a stone's throw from Louisiana (via a lake). It was not a perfect town, by any means, but I do have many, ahem, interesting memories. One of my memories is of Halloween; I distinctly remember going to a haunted house put on by a local church.  I remember knowing, at the ripe old age of 8 or 9, that this haunted house was about "real things" that could scare you. Basically, I think it was one of those haunted houses meant to scare kids from abortions. I remember there being a lot of fake body parts and hospital patients and screaming. When you're 8, flying body parts are a very important part of the fear process. Just recently, an owl has taken residence in my back yard. We have a huge mesquite tree, probably one of the biggest in the neighborhood. It's the kind of tree that reminds me a little too

I ran cross-country in high school. Honestly, it was one of the best things I ever did. It gave me a sense of determination I hadn't had before and taught me the value of hard work. Running two or three times a day? Sure! Nine miles before school? OK! In the summer, we often ran fun runs. I remember standing at one in Houston and Destiny's Child had just become A Thing. They were from Houston, a fact I found exciting because no one was ever from Houston, and I'd once read Beyonce's dad used to have them run and sing to practice performing. That was the teenage thinking in me: We're both from Houston and we've both run before! We're practically twinsies! We're currently waking up early, trying to will our bodies to want to go to sleep easier on the plane before our very own (not so) Royal Wedding. I typically wake at 5:30 in the school year, but in the summer I hover between 7:30-8:30 because, woah nelly, I like to Live A Little. Every morning I g