Restroom Diversity: Men vs. Women

All my life, I've been a woman (whew!) and therefore, for the majority of my life I had but one perspective on restrooms during my twenty-some years as a bathroom-using-female:

• All women sit down to go to the bathroom, no matter the "occasion" so to speak.
• Almost all women's restrooms, whether public or private, are usually relatively clean. Sure, sometimes an errant soul "forgets" to flush or there is some toilet paper on the floor, but it's usually clean enough that you can use it without feeling horribly disgusted and like your ass will shrivel up and fall off if you sit down.
• All women wipe after they use the restroom, regardless of what "occasion" we just completed.
• There is always toilet paper in the roll.
• We would rather cut off our hand than have to touch the flusher stick. Women flush with our feet. No matter how high (or low) the flusher stick is.
• If we have to use that cute-little-mini-designer-metal trash can mounted to the wall to dispose of any number of our exciting femanine products, we will open and close lid as if it is made of Tiffany glass... slowly, carefully, and quietly, so as not to be discovered as "The Menstruating One."
• No woman will willingly "go #2" with another woman in the restroom, unless it is one of the huge and/or really loud stadium-style restrooms in which no one could hear you, even if you unleashed Mount St. Helens on it and 15 other people are already flushing anyway.
• If a woman has to "go #2" and there is already another woman in the restroom, we will hold it flex our muscles as hard as we can until our eyes water and we rock back and forth to comfort ourselves, until the other person finally leaves the restroom, which is immediately met with a huge sigh of relief and an unleashing of the Holy Beast that has now had time to really stack up inside us.
• If we have to go so badly that there is no way we can wait until the other(s) leave the restroom, we will make whatever loud but appropriate-sounding noise we can to distract from the noise we are making or fear we are about to make in the toilet, i.e. coughing, tapping our feet, or in a worst case scenario, flushing.
• If any embarassing bathroom sounds or smells occur with someone else in the restroom, we WILL wait in the stall, peering out periodically and/or listening for the door slam, before we exit, until we are sure we will not be seen and therefore the "known culprit" of said sound or smell.

Men, on the other hand:

• not only stand up to pee, but it is socially unacceptable for the most part for them to sit down and pee, UNLESS of course they are already "going #2" in which case they "tuck it under" which is, in fact, the weirdest thing ever and as a woman, I cannot understand how that doesn't either snap off or hurt like the bejeezus.
• don't call it "going #2" nor do they appear to be capable of calling it any even remotely polite or discreet word.
• almost never have toilet paper in the roll and this isn't really a problem for them.
• wouldn't even consider the flusher stick being dirty and probably wouldn't flush the urinal nor the pot anyway.
• have a weird cake of... dishwashing tablets? in their urinals that are supposedly meant to keep them smelling fresh but instead are just seriously gross pee-catchers, stinkier than your kitchen sponge.
• do not care if the bathroom is clean or has ever been cleaned, whether it has a light or a sink or even a working toilet.
• do not wipe after they pee, a disturbing thought that I did not discover until I was in my early 20s, a single mom trying to potty train a boy, and therefore learned that boys do not "dab it off" with a small piece of TP as I had always thought, nor do they "do a little shake" before they put it away to make sure all the little dribbles are off (which for the record, I think should be immediately entered into the Man Laws because that little pee dribble on your pants is disgusting.)
• do not have cute-little-mini-designer-metal trash cans in their stalls because men do not pee in stalls and if they are using the stall, any trash can need they have is probably way beyond a cute-little-mini-designer-metal one anyway.
• do not require any "male hygiene products" of any kind and you're probably lucky if he even put on clean underwear that day.
• do not care about the size of the bathroom.
• do not care if other men (or even women, for that matter) are in the bathroom when they have to "go #2".
• are actually proud of, and will converse with other men about, that foul sound and/or smell they just created in the stall.
• will tell everyone around them about the fouldsound and/or smell they created in the bathroom, thereby rendering it completely unnecessary and furthermore impossible for anyone else to try to embarass them about it to anyone else in the group/office/party/restaurant, etc.
• can go anywhere, any time, in front of anyone, in any amount, as frequently as necessary.

In summation, women treat their restroom experiences like "He Who Shall Not Be Named" and men treat them like hitting a home run the World Series or a hole in one on the PGA Tour.

Sorry boys, MVP doesn't stand for Most Virile Pooper (or Pisser, as it were).

TL;dr aka I Promised You A Short Post

Sunday night is here again already. I hate Sunday nights. They bring that unfortunate and yet recurring reminder that another ridiculously hectic work week lies in wait, full of rushing here and there and everywhere, full of too little sleep, too much work, and not enough fun. This Sunday night, I'm reflecting on my first week of blogging, still fretting over the header that has yet to be created that my fantastically creative and tech-savvy friend Mike saw me fretting over and created for me (see above, isn't it FAB? <3 him!!), the layout I find still a little basic and juvenile, wondering when is going to be a good time to start networking / promoting this baby of mine, still in its infancy and yet like a child, full of promise. Which brings me to the realization that I've already twice broken my TL;dr rule. 3 posts, 2 of which were so long, that if they were featured by anything but my 4 favorite blog-ladies, I probably would have skipped over them myself.

So tonight, as I watch Monday Night Football (yes, I'm that kind of girl), and agonize over my brutal tooth pain, and realize I'm going to have to seek out the aid of a dentist in the morning, I commit myself to a short post.

Tonight, as my daughter was climbing into bed, while I was selecting her clothes for preschool tomorrow, she was laying on her back, playing with her Mickey & Minnie stuffed animals, sing-songing some kind of story to them, which she does often during this time of night. It makes me sad to say, but I'm often in such a rush to get everyone to bed and complete the night's chores, that I don't usually listen to whatever it is she's singing. For some reason though, tonight it caught my attention:

"I love my Mommy sooo much. She is sooo nice and I love her sooo much, la la la."

I crossed the room immediately and bent down to give her "Eskimo-mos" as we call them (you probably just call them Eskimo Kisses but we're dorks). "Well your Mommy loves you too, so so much. I hope you know what a beautiful girl you are, and how lucky I am to have you as a daughter, especially when you're being nice, like this!" I had to kind of laugh as I said that, as you'll come to know my daughter, she is 98% sweet as pie and 2% HOLY COW.

"I hope I have a daughter some day, Mommy."
"Well, I hope you do too, Bug."
"Why, Mommy?"
"Because I hope she brings you as many smiles as you bring me."

She smiled the warmest, most adorable little smile as she rolled over, cuddling Mickey & Minnie as I tucked her in and she began to drift off to sleep, and my heart melted into a thousand tiny droplets of Momlove, oozing for this lovely girl that is mine-all-mine.

Thank Goodness For The Internet... and Pain Meds

That's right, I said it... thank goodness for the internet. I'm sure most bloggers feel the same way because, let's face it, without the internet, we'd just be thousands of people mailing letters around the world and hoping someone would pick them up and read them, find them insightful and/or entertaining, and respond to them. Highly unlikely, right?

Well despite my previously mentioned adoration for Google Reader, today I'm ridiculously thankful that you can literally Google anything. No really, I mean anything. If you can think of it, however unsual or potentially stupid you think it is, I guarantee you it's already been Googled. I remember the days of actually submitting questions to Yahoo Answers... now, I just Google my question and the previously provided Yahoo Answer to someone else's identical question pops up. It's a wonderful time saver and feeds right into that good 'ol American institution of instant gratification.

Today, it saved me a call to the doctor. Now, I know my doctor has told me in the past, "Don't trust anything you see on the internet regarding medical advice, with the possible exception of WebMD." but today I am (was) desperate. I woke up with a horrible toothache, the kind that pounds back into your ear and through your jaw, the kind that makes you want to cry out like Rocky, only instead of "Adriaaaan!!" you're howling, "Owwwiiieee!" But alas, since I have children, I have to suck it up and motor through the morning ritual.

My husband is at work today so all the morning festivities fall to me. I realized quickly while waiting for the toast to brown in the toaster oven that I was not going to make it through the day without the aid of pain medication. Thankfully, in my groggy-eyed stupor, I also realized I couldn't take Tylenol on an empty stomach. I managed to get the kids fed and choke down about 3/4 of a piece of peanut butter toast (feeding the rest to the dog, of course) before I couldn't take it any more and popped 2 Tylenol and prayed for it to kick in. I cruised around the house completing the rest of the morning routine... the tooth pain wasn't getting any better and in fact, it was quickly becoming a migraine. I was almost chanting inside my head "Please-oh-please-oh-pleeeasseee, work Tylenol, work!" Ordinarily, Tylenol is very good to me; today, it was a complete disappointment. I turned on the Disney Channel for the kids, collapsed into the couch, pulled a blanket over my head, and quietly whimpered to myself.

2 hours went by without any relief. At this point, I was praying for sleep. I knew if I could fall asleep, I would at least get some reprieve from the pain, and maybe, just maybe, when I woke up, the Tylenol would have kicked in and the pain would at least be lessened, but hopefully gone all together. But of course, sleep would not come. Twice, the phone rang. More whimpering as I realized I would have to a) actually speak with my ridiculously sore mouth and b) sound pleasant to whatever sorry souls were calling during my time of hell. Thankfully, I have great kids who saw me not feeling well and watched TV quietly, without arguing amongst themselves. It was unusual but shockingly fantastic.

Now for the last hour or so, I had been thinking about that bottle of Vicodin in my purse that was left over from when I thought I broke my finger a few months back. I've always thought the local urgent care doctor had an unhealthy obsession for handing out pain meds, but who am I to judge? :) At the time, I knew the finger pain wasn't bad enough to warrant Vicodin, but that didn't stop me from filling the prescription, knowing surely there'd be a day (hint, hint) where I'd need some for one reason or another. I figure they know you are going to do this. Why else would they give you 20 pills? TWENTY? Well alright, if you insist! *wink*

So I'd been thinking about that Vicodin, but talking myself out of taking any, since I had already taken Tylenol. About that time, a text from the hubs showed up, asking how our morning was going. I try not to bog him down with our troubles when he's at work, so I gave him the Reader's Digest version of me writhing in pain, screaming bloody murder on the couch, and my reluctance to take anything more for it. "JFGI" he says, in the nicest way possible. *sigh* I know he's right, but I had been putting it off because the battery on my Droid is almost dead and the laptop a) takes forever to boot up and b) has a ridiculously bright screen that was surely going to aggravate my headache even more. But I had come to the place where I could not take it anymore... 2 1/2 hours into this blinding pain, it was time to Google it. "Can I take vicodin..." I typed into the search engine, and Google quickly autocompleted it for me "...with tylenol". Aww yeah! Instant gratification!

Good news, I'm not going to die if I take a Vicodin on top of the 2 Tylenol I already took. I was so thankful for the previously asked and answered Yahoo Answers question, and the Vicodin in my purse. So thankful that, despite the blinding brightness of the laptop screen, I had to tell you about it. :)

The Original 1st Post aka What Am I Doing Here?!

Hello Internet,

I'd like to say I'm here to rock your world, but in actuality, I'm pretty much terrified out of my mind about starting up a blog. Me? A blogger? A blogger on Blogger? 6 months ago I would have scoffed at the idea, and probably even made fun of people who did, in fact, blog. So how did I come to be here, sitting in the food court at the mall, banging furiously on the keys while my daughter is playing in the background? Well you see, it all started with Google Reader...

I guess now that I think about it, it actually started before Google Reader. Once upon a time, I worked a really intense job. A job with far more work in one day than there were hours to complete it all. Even after I left work, I would regularly check my Blackberry. I would bring work home with me to clutter up my couch after the kids went to bed. Sometimes, I regret to say, I even went in to the office on Saturdays. It was a rigorous pace that I, somehow, managed to keep up for 18 months. Looking back now, I don't know how I did it, in addition to having 4 kids, a husband, and a dog at home.

The one day, the strangest thing happened... one of our biggest customers decided to "go a different direction", thereby cutting my workload basically in half. IN HALF. Under the previous workload, I had, by necessity, become a productivity machine. I could do three and four and sometimes even five things at the same time. I had "multitasker" mastered, but the pace left me with never a down moment. Now, there I was, the same number of hours in a day, but only half the amount of work to do. Dare I say it, I got... bored. "Bored? What is that?" I remember in the early days of my career, I had a sign on my desk that said "Being Busy Beats Being Bored" and while at that time, it was basically just an indirect attempt at a little ass-kissing, now I was living the blaring reminder of just how true that really was. I was so good at getting things done expediently, that I could now complete my work in just over four hours. I had absolutely no idea what to do with the other hours in my work day.

I did all the things that I am sure other bored people do... I sent a few emails, I checked MSN and Google News for the latest haps. I found and played around on Free Rice (which by the way, if you aren't familiar with, is a great way to pass the time while testing/increasing your knowledge, and contributing to the World Food Programme all at the same time. What could be better?!). And then, inevitably, I was bored again. Painfully bored, for several days. I even emptied my gmail inbox completely, which almost never happens. Usually I leave behind a few e-coupons I'd like to use before they expire, the church newsletter for the week, etc. but I was so bored, I had even filed all that stuff away. In folders. With proper labels. Oh yes, time passed so slow it was mind-numbing. And then, I noticed something strange left behind in the void that was now my inbox. It wasn't an email, but a snarky note from the clever Google programmers. "No new mail! Want to read updates from your favorite sites? Try Google Reader!"

"What the heck is Google Reader?" I remember thinking, as I clicked the link. It brought up a list of "suggested sites" that it thought I might like. Of course, it didn't know me at all... yet. I perused through, intrigued. "There's a lot of really interesting/funny/bizarre/creative stuff in here!" I thought. I checked out the staff recommended feeds and from there, it steamrolled out of control. I started adding sites I already knew, like Engrish, lolcats, and Texts from Last Night. The more sites I added, the more appealing Reader's recommended items became, and I found even more feeds I wanted to subscribe to (I'm over 40 as of this post). As the days and weeks went on, I started opening my Reader at the same time I opened my gmail, and at some point, leaving it open all day and checking back a few times a day to see what new posts had trickled in. One day, I had exhausted all of the items in my feed, and had skipped over to the recommended items. The first thing I was drawn to was a post by Melissa from Operation Nice; her mission is to "to remind you that a little NICE goes a long way." I was utterly drawn to this concept, and it was the first blog I ever subscribed to. Her semi-weekly posts shared stories of kindness, friendship, hope, and love. They were inspiring; they spoke to me, loudly. I was even motiviated to participate in one of her Nice Assignments.

A few days later, Melissa featured RAOK (Random Acts of Kindness) from a lady that I have grown to absolutely adore, named Michelle of So Wonderful, So Marvelous. Michelle had devoted her 34th birthday to doing 34 RAOKs for people. I was awestruck (and quickly added her to my Reader). I'm addicted and I greatly look forward to her posts.

Fast forward a month or two, there I was bored again, and I remembered that Michelle had a link on her blog called Peeps You Should Read, so I wondered what things this awesome blog-lady would recommend to help pass the time. There I found Blogging Dangerously, who I adore because she says all the things most of us women are far too intimidated to say outloud (warning: some posts are NSFW and be careful before you ask "who" Carmen Electra is) and Enjoying the Small Things, a fantastic blog (with lots and lots of photos), written by a gorgeous woman named Kelle who has 2 daughters, one of whom has Downs Syndrome. The story of the birth of her daughter Nella moved me to tears. Literal tears. At my desk, surrounded by coworkers. It is gut-wrenchingly yet refreshingly honest to the core and I was not surprised when I noticed in a later post that it had been published in a magazine.

At this point, I was (and still am) beyond addicted to my 4 blog-ladies, who by the way, have no idea I even exist, nor how much I absolutely admire them each for who they are and what they do. Once I thought to myself, "I would love to write a guest blog for one of these!" which turned into, "Why couldn't I just write them all myself?" which turned into, "You never stick with any of your wild ideas, fughettaboutit!" which, over the course of 4-6 weeks, turned into jotting down blog post ideas almost every chance I got, which turned into pestering two of my closest friends, John and Lanine, almost ENDLESSLY with questions like, "IF I had a blog, what would it be called? How would I set up the layout? What kind of host should I use?" Thankfully, they are two of the awesomest people in the world and were really supportive, and only rolled their eyes when I wasn't looking. :)

I struggled endlessly on what to name this blog. The name was the most important thing to me, second only to a great layout. I wanted something direct, maybe a little snarky, fun, but that was true to what I planned to write about which was, well... a little bit of everything. I read a few "How To Start A Blog" articles... not helpful at all, and mostly confusing, by the way - I don't recommend it. I wrote down and scratched out at least 20 different names or versions of previous names. Then all of a sudden, out of the clear blue sky, like a bolt of lightning creativity, I mumbled outloud to myself, "It's like... thought sorting!" and voila! Here we are.

I have really high hopes for this blog. Aspirations of being as awesome (and let's be honest, as followed) as Melissa. Michelle, Kit. & Kelle. I really do think I have interesting things to share... will you join me?

Hello, Internet! aka "Someone To Tell It To"

When I sat down last night to write my "intro" post, I expected to write a quick few lines about how I came to be here, and about the bloggers that I admire and who have brought me to this lovely blogosphere... and about 7 paragraphs later, I realized if I posted that as my first blog, no one would ever read it. "Too long, didn't read" is one of my favorite internet memes; I just couldn't bring myself to commit it in Blog 1. (I am relatively confident that I will commit it at some point in the future, though. :P )

So, Hello, Internet. I hope you'll be good to me... like an old friend or a comfy pair of sneakers and my favorite jeans on a Saturday afternoon. I hope you'll bring followers, comments, laughter, tears, encouragement, joy, forgive my excessive and technically improper use of the ellipsis, and so much more... but who are we kidding, mostly I just hope you'll bring followers, haha. Because isn't that why we write, to be heard?

As my husband always says, "It's a basic human need to 'have someone to tell it to.'"

I'm tellin' you.