phatDonna

Last week, my girls and I decided that if you are under 40, you are too young to be called a cougar. So we decided puma was a more fitting term. And I embraced my puma status on three separate occasions while in New York. Looking back I am amazed at myself, because back when I was young and effortlessly living at my goal weight, I would NEVER have walked up to a table of guys by myself and start chatting them up. I waited for boys to come up to me, which they didn’t do very often.

And yet, at age 36, with more than few extra pounds and a kid at home and boobs that look like tennis balls in tube socks, I just don’t care. If I feel like I have something to say or ask those boys, I will go up. What do I care? What are they going to do? Chances are, they are going to be impressed by my balls and flirt right back.

I think also that half the battle in doing that is that I know that I have no interest in really hooking up with anyone. I’m not looking to exchange phone numbers or go on a date. I just want to flirt. That’s all I’m ready for now, and so far, all my victims have been obliging. One of these guys might one day turn out to be something more than a nameless face in my memory, but probably not. But why waste the opportunity to have fun and exercising my flirting muscles?

Isn’t it amazing what you can do when you realize you truly have nothing to lose and everything to gain?

Yeah, yeah I know. I’m late at posting. But in case you don’t follow me on Twitter, you may not have heard me bitching about having to have the hard drive in my laptop replaced. I just got it back last night and am now back in the blogging saddle, as it were. If you don’t want to read, just go ahead and move on. And yes, it’s going to be a long one. Why don’t you grab a glass of wine?

First, let me say that BlogHer was a different experience this year. I went to not a single panel, we skipped out early of the welcome breakfast, and didn’t attend the closing either. We were there for fun in NYC with girls, not really about blogging.

Thursday, in line to board my second flight, I met Claudia. I’m not sure what gave me the inkling that she was heading to New York for BlogHer, but I asked her what she was headed there for, and she said BlogHer. We squeeeed together for a few minutes. Then it turned out she was sitting in the row in front of me. We chatted a bit on the flight, and she agreed that it would be a marvelous idea to share a cab. After some wrangling of baggage and annoying a cabbie by making him go to the Delta terminal to pick up Shelly, we were off!

When we got to the hotel, Statia was already in the room, with a bottle of Grey Goose. Damn, I knew I loved her. I can’t believe that as long as we’ve been blog friends, this was the first time I had met her in person. And we all were instantly in love with each other. Why? Because we are all awesome, and additionally, we love to cuss like sailors but have to curtail it in our real lives because of children. Anyhoooo… we headed down to the bar where we ordered drinks and $18 BLTs and to wait for Rougie. Rougie is one of the most amazing people I’ve met. She and I are living similar lives right now, and I’ve been wanting to hug her for a few months. I’m so glad I got the chance. I did it a lot over the course of the weekend. Did I mention that I’m a hugger?

We decided to blow off the hotel and find us an Irish pub so that Sarah and I could do Irish Car Bombs. Here’s us getting ready to go out.

Rougie and Shelly

Me bothering Statia who was just trying to talk to her kids

My awesome strappy kate spade leopard heels. Fuckers. They really hurt my feet and left me hobbling the rest of the trip, but damn, aren’t they hot?

As soon as we got to the bar, the shoes came off.

The Irish pub was tons of fun. We drank, we talked, we bought drinks and flirted with a table full of adorable boys who were fun, and did I mention adorable?

OK, so perhaps agreeing to get up to run the 5K the next morning was a very bad idea. But we had all made tutus so we drug ourselves up and out for it. It wasn’t exactly a success but I won’t go into a rant about that. The best thing was that as we were slowly ambling through Central Park, we heard music. We discovered that it was a Good Morning America Summer Concert in the Park. And it was John Legend and the Roots! We asked if we could go in and they said absolutely so we took a wee break and listened.

The rest of the day was kind of a blur of hangover. I felt like shit, and it was totally deserved after the night before. We didn’t go to any sessions, but did spend some quality time at the sponsor booths. The swag was amazing this year. And I got to meet Elmo.

That night, Shelly and I went out to dinner away from the hotel. We needed real food, and found the best little restaurant just a couple blocks up the street from the hotel. The weather was gorgeous, so we sat at a little bistro table outside and ate some real (and overpriced) food and just had a low key night.

The next day, we were all feeling back to new (except our colons, which I don’t think ever recovered) and were ready to be touristy. We went to the Museum of Natural History, which was awesome.  I met another celebrity of sorts.

Then it was back to the hotel to get ready for SparkleCorn!

We met Pioneer Woman in the lobby and I talked to her, possibly making a bigger ass of myself than I did last year.

SparkleCorn was like the best version you could imagine of junior prom. The ballroom was decorated with all kinds of awesome pop icons in poster form and stand-up cardboard form. But the music was fantastic, and we danced our asses off for two and a half hours straight.

Here’s me and AndreAnna

Here I am fondling Professor Snape’s hair. I’ve always felt he was terribly misunderstood.

Here I am dry humping Darth Vader. Like you do….

Shelly and Statia went to the bathroom together and picked up a chick. She was very cool, but for the life of me I can’t remember her name. If you know this person, will you please let me know?

I met some amazing women. I finally got to meet pseudostoops and Pocklock in person. I have pictures of both of them, but I know they try to be a bit anonymous so I won’t post photos of them. But I was thrilled to meet both of them in person and give them hugs. I got to meet Sara and she is delightful. I am newly in love with Cass and for the life of me, I can’t understand why I never read her blog before. She is wonderful. Here she is with Linda

We left SparkleCorn and went to CheeseburgHer. It was fun, and it was good to have some cheeseburgers to soak up all the alcohol. Then we left to find another Irish pub for more Irish Car Bombs, because AndreAnna and I vowed to do one together before we left New York.

It was amazing from start to finish. Even when I was hung over and feeling like total shit, I had a great time. I’m not sure if I’ll go next year because I already have some trips on the books for next year, and I’ve been to San Diego a bunch of times. So if this was my last one, I’m happy that I had a fantastic time. We made it our own. We did what we wanted and it was stress free.

Relax, I’m not here to give you any sort of survival guide. I just wanted to say SQUEEEEE! I can’t wait to go.

I was really trying to do a carry-on suitcase for the weekend. Really, for three nights away, one should be able to squeeze their shit into a carry-on suitcase. And since my connection at DFW is a wee bit under one hour, I have very little hope that my bag will make it from one flight to the next. But. I just can’t conceivably fit it all into one bag. I need to bring my InStyler, a huge tutu, and running shoes. Those three things alone take up all the room in my carry-on size bag. So fuck it. I’m checking my bag and praying to the luggage gods that my bag makes it on MY flight to LGA, and if not mine, then at least one of the other several flights on Thursday so that my bag gets delivered before the 5K on Friday morning. The best part of this is that I no longer have to stress over planning outfits with the fewest pieces possible, and I can bring extra “just in case” outfits. I really don’t like to travel without an extra thing or two to wear in case of spills or feeling fat or whatever. Also, we don’t have a set schedule of events, and I just want to make sure I have something appropriate to wear no matter what we do.  And, this means that I can bring my good camera, not just the crappy point and shoot camera.

So if you are going to BlogHer and would like to make sure to meet up, comment here and we can trade contact info.

In the few short years of Betsy’s life, we have bought and been given several toys and puzzles by Melissa and Doug. I think their stuff is genius, I absolutely do. I often enjoy playing with them alongside her.

But I have a complaint. As she has gotten older, the toys that are age appropriate for her have lots of smaller pieces. But the toys don’t have a way to store the pieces. For example, I bought Betsy this about a month ago

She LOVES it and plays with it all the time. And the container it’s in is pretty good for putting the pieces all back inside. But it has no lid. So there is no way to keep the pieces all inside and not spill out. Especially because she loves this one so much and has wanted to take it with her on trips. I have to say no because I don’t want her to lose all the pieces.

These toys are kind of on the expensive side. Not prohibitively so but a bit pricier than other things. I don’t mind because they are good quality, they are well loved and they last. I know we can pass them down to others because they will last. Assuming we can find all the parts when the time comes. It couldn’t be that hard to add a lid to the boxes, even a cheap plastic one that slips over the wooden part to keep tiny shoes and such inside.

I’m going to email them right now with my little piece of brilliance. I am sure they live for that shit.

One of the things I’ve always struggled with is allowing myself to feel my feelings. If my feelings were unpleasant or uncomfortable, I would either try to dismiss them as unacceptable or wrong, or just ignore them. All of you emotionally healthy people out there already know that that course of action is simply ridiculous. Feelings are not good or bad, right or wrong. They just are what they are. How you choose to act on them can be good or bad, right or wrong. But a feeling itself is beyond judgment really. And you can’t escape them. If you try to run from a feeling or push it down, you might succeed for a while – an hour, a day, even a year. But that feeling is going to resurface eventually somehow. So you might as well deal with it in the present.

A very popular image of a feeling is that of a wave. And one way that my therapist taught me to feel my feelings is to picture myself on a beach, standing in the surf, and seeing the wave approach. Knowing that the wave is going to crash over me and I will get wet. The wave might even knock me down, I might get pulled under for a while, but eventually the wave will recede and I will be fine, I can get back to the beach and I can dry myself off and move on.

Right now I feel sucked into the undertow. I guess it’s perfectly natural for the feelings of sadness and loss to linger for a long time. Mine are like an ocean really, to continue the metaphor. Sometimes, the sea is calm, and it’s a long time between waves, and sometimes the waves keep coming one right after the other like in a storm.. And right now it’s a veritable hurricane. I can’t say I know what’s triggered it, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter.

But here’s the cool thing, the thing that makes me want to sing the praises of therapy from every mountain top. As these waves are crashing over me, even as I feel like I spend days underwater, I know that it won’t always feel like this. I know that I’ll get back to that beach. I can acknowledge to myself that I feel sad or angry or betrayed. I just take a second to notice it’s there and then go about my day. And that’s all it takes most of the time. It’s not so scary after all.

Who would have ever thought I could be an emotionally healthy person? But I’m getting there.