photo purse montage

If you find yourselves in need of a blog post, try this meme out. I got it from Jaywalker at Belgian Waffle, who actually had real girl stuff and a ball to play with and who surpassed my slovenly bag contents with . . . leaf mulch . . . and Alexa at Flotsam, whose purse contents were, I thought, notable in that she had multiple objects of sentimental value and she carries a handbag hook one might use to hang her purse from a table. I have one of those, in my armoire. My bag is noteworthy for its high number of products you can use to clean up bodily fluids or produce them, such as a drippy nose, crying eyes, a baby bum or a mommy bum (the flushable wipes I can't live without), a burp rag for oral ooze, three kinds of lip lard in various stages of grittiness (which has nothing to do with the "organic" ingredients), a baby spoon and backup binky. I have a Tide pen for necessary clothing cleanup, SPF 55 kids sunscreen, a strand of pearlish beads, and the sole remaining earpiece of my last pair of sunglasses. I have a toothbrush that I am certain constitutes a health hazard, some prescription drugs for unmentionable conditions and enough bobby pins for an entire updo, despite my lack of long hair. Two out of four pens work, and my albuterol inhaler is currently not expired. Now, both Alexa Flotsam and Jaywalker not just goddesses of the written word but they are vastly more fashionable than I, which is why they both carried actual makeup and girly things. Please don't hold that against me. I have way more Kleenex than either of them, so if you wanted to see a weepy French film you'd be better off with me, and I might be able to save your shirt from the butter stains if you spill your popcorn.

a question for the ages

At dinner last night, a friend mentioned that she tried to follow the example of French women, as told in French Women Don't Get Fat, and ate nothing but leeks for an entire weekend. By the end of the weekend she was filled with a murderous rage, and a hatred of leeks, but was perhaps a tiny bit more slender. My theory was initially that this is where the weight loss comes in - if a person can't stand the food they have available, they'd damn sure eat a lot less. I'm fairly certain if I ate any variant of the onion family for three days I'd be so angry that the gas I'd pass would make me ineligible for human company that I might be willing to just fast altogether. Then I remembered that I'd read years ago in a womens' magazine that French women having perkier breasts than American ladies was because they shower in colder water so the tissue doesn't break down and sag over time. We wondered if perhaps they got rid of the evidence of the leek diet by passing gas in the cold shower but no one in the family would know because they were unable to hear the sound over the woman shrieking in pain from the icy water freezing her breasts into a permanently pert position. The older women in our dinner group denied any plausibility of this theory, and swore that only gravity might be blamed for the breasts that take the southern road. A better explanation - women in France contend with less gravity. This might also explain how the French soldiers "fetcher la vache" in Monty Python's Holy Grail film in order to catapult it onto King Arthur's party. Getting the cow onto the catapult would surely prove difficult for the French guards, unless either French cows are smaller or gravity holds things down just a little less in that part of the world. Research may be required.