Need a break from all your stress? Then this is for you, compliments of the inestimable Kristen Lamb, who somehow connected Home Depot, Cialis and The Matrix in a way that had me rolling on the floor as I read and still giggling several days later.
Click over to Kristen’s blog to read the entire post if you’d like, and be sure to scroll to the bottom to see what I’m up to this week!
“…Anyway, if you grew up like I did, knocked half unconscious with boomerang compliments, then you might have turned to books, shows, magazines or mentors/gurus to learn to think in “healthy” ways.
Perhaps you even went on-line in search of some kind of “non-toxic” affirmation that you were not a total disappointment.
And OMG! *angels sing* There it is!
The Media LOVES US for WHO WE ARE
We found it! The site for women and it says we are enough. No, more than enough. Perfect the way we are. Heck-to-the-yeah! We knew it the whole time *does cabbage patch*.
But then that website or magazine that just told us we were more than enough as we already are….
Wait…what?
It has a gazillion articles of how we can improve and be even BETTER. And these articles, they are sandwiched between ads promising products and services to help us no longer suck.
Wait. You said I was perfect, but I need fixing? So I AM damaged. Oh, okay I see. See, I thought I was supposed to love myself as I am, imperfections and all….
But, my bad. You’re right. Truth hurts. I do have chubby thighs, wrinkles and so much laundry I’m fairly sure I lost one of my kids. Haven’t heard from the smallest one today. I will buy and do all of this and THEN…then I can love me for ME. Good. We have a plan.
Cool. Good. I am so happy I found this site because before, I thought I was just supposed to be okay being me and I was wrong. But NOW I have help because your site has 10 Ways to Have an Immaculate House and Trim My Thighs at the same time using household cleaning tools to get fit with…
Swiffercize…
Directions:
Hold in your core as you stand in front of the refrigerator.
Now, bend and dust, and bend and thrust. Squat and swoosh, and firm your tush! Floor is clean and now you’re lean!
Dust those high places ladies and say goodbye to flabby arms!
Really this is genius. I can get a cleaner home today like in Good Housekeeping, a firm body like a movie star AND save money because I don’t have to pay a gym and all while improving my time-management skills.
#Genius
****Oh and there is that anti-depressant ad for when none of this crap actually works.
And after all of this, I finally realize Google is proof there is life after death and Nana is now in a better place. Nana has reached a higher level of being in The Matrix.
The mean old bat is now Google and she is STILL fixing me.
The Matrix is Powered by Imperfection
Self-acceptance is something many of us struggle with and the fight gets harder day by day as our culture bombards us with ideas and products and services founded on us being “less than” while promising some kind of “perfection.”
They’re selling magic creams to us older gals telling us this Oil of Delay will make us look like a model half our age who’s been Photoshopped when she really didn’t need to be Photoshopped because she isn’t old in the first place!
She’s a kid and has like maybe a zit…not even a wrinkle or if she does, it’s a wrinkle that’s small and more like a…a pre-wrinkle.
We are so used to being lied to, we don’t even question it because most of it if we took a few minutes to apply some critical thinking, The Matrix would all unravel.
Never Question The Matrix
Critical thinking is like holy water on The Matrix. Commercials, ads, programs, and hype sizzles and screams and loses power if we just stop…and think.
I’ll prove it.
Men are told that if they buy a blue pill it will dramatically enhance their sexual vitality so they can go sailing…alone. WTH?
Sailing by themselves and that doesn’t even make any damn sense.
Guys, seriously. Someone call Viagra. Like if you’re buying a pill for physical intimacy with what we are assuming is another human (as in more than one person involved in this activity) then the whole going sailing alone just…
I don’t get it. I mean are you a pirate? Does Viagra make you a Viking, and the dude in the commercial is sailing off alone because the plan is to raid an island of unsuspecting sunbathers?
Y’all do know that is illegal. Viagara, I’m assuming you consulted your legal department on this.
Okay. I will stop. Just please to make me feel better, put another living person of consenting age on the boat in the commercial and I promise I will stop over thinking this…..
No.
Seriously. Just one more. I can’t leave this one be.
Cialis
If your drug works so great, why aren’t the TWO people in the same bathtub? I confess. I am no spring chicken, but I’m not so old I can’t recall the 1990s and…
*brain heating up*
How does this pill work? Like does it make the male libido so powerful that it…teleports? And us gals are supposed to be Schroedinger’s “Cat” in that the footsie-time is both there in OUR tub but not…at the same time?
Because now all I want to do is to e-mail Neil deGrasse Tyson on this, because your drug is proof there is a multiverse where older people are scoring by apparently folding space.
And is this why we only ever see these folks in your commercials from the back…because their eyes have turned blue like the Fremen?
#HeWhoControlsTheSpiceControlsTheSexyTime #TheSpiceMustFlow …into these bathtubs because water sure isn’t.
Okay Cialis, I mean no disrespect. I get y’all mean well.
I admit, many of us older couples are cranky and tired (mainly of finding Barbie shoes and Legos in the bed) and you’re just trying to help.
We appreciate the effort, but the message just gets us all confused because unlike young people, older people THINK. We in fact think too much…which is a big part of the lack-of-nookie problem.
This pill is so us older people can be super hot and frisky like when we were twenty. The PILL will make us fixate on love and kissing…instead of fixating on how to kill out the crabgrass in the lawn or that the tile in the bathroom needs to be repaired.
In two separate bathtubs…on a hill.
Which—just being honest here—your metaphor only confuses us and lead our minds everywhere BUT a bedroom. In fact, it makes anyone married or over the age of 35 to forget about nookie altogether.
Instead, a lot of the guys start contemplating how the hell someone got two tubs on a hill…with working plumbing. There are several other types of services like sewer service from PIC Plumbing Services, that you can reach out to in case you are looking for them.
So the men are all:
My wife isn’t gonna want tubs in the backyard now, right? I can’t lay pipe like that. Hell, I’m not twenty-two. I’ll throw out my back with all that bending and digging. And the yard has crabgrass. Crabgrass spreads, man. You gotta stop it when you see it.
Simultaneously many of us women are all pissed off because we see the look on our husband’s face when he watches that [email protected]$$ Cialis commercial.
We KNOW that look.
We saw it right before we banned him from watching home improvement shows after he tore out our pantry shelves then never put them back.
We know our husband is trying to figure out how to install bathtubs in the yard because he thinks that is what we want. No, we want our pantry put back together because we misplaced all our spice.
That, and he still has to get rid of all the crabgrass…’cause it spreads. Neighbors don’t want that spreading to them, too.
So the women watch the Cialis commercial and are all:
Oh no he isn’t. If he thinks I’m gonna go outside and maybe up a hill to clean all that? Nossiree. What about the one we have that’s old and needs fixing? He isn’t trained to lay pipe like that. He doesn’t need to! He already bought the caulk, the jumbo size for more than one job! And the CAULK is still in the drawer. Unused. Untouched. Probably turned from white to blue now and won’t look right.
Wasted caulk.
No. Not today. NOT today. Learn about MaidEasy.com.au and spare yourself any cleaning!
Home Depot has to be behind all this, because we are now thinking of needing more caulk.
Defeats the whole purpose. Cialis? Seriously fire that twenty-something marketing person and hire an over forty romance author.
***You could also hire the over 40 erotica authors…but only HBO could air the commercials.
Where was I? Sorry, I got hung up on that. But all this proves my point about The Matrix. We are all plugged in and buying an illusion without question. We are just accepting that we are not enough and the X, Y or Z would remedy that.
It won’t. Happiness is what these folks all sell, but happiness is highly overrated. Want to know why? Because happiness relies on happenstance. Our surroundings, what we have or don’t have dictate how we feel.
This is why they sell LIES. Lies sell STUFF. It just sells a lot of CAULK.
Truth can, however, bring contentment, and maybe even JOY if we let it. Love and friendship and family and kids in all its messy imperfection can actually be enough if we let it be. We can actually be at peace with wrinkles because a line-free face is just weird…and expensive.
Then you just get more wrinkles because you have to pay the medical spa bills.
Embrace the lines of laughter and pain. You earned them. When we learn to be at peace with the messy house because it means we have a home. When we learn to love our cellulite-laden legs because it means we have LEGS. When we embrace the Legos that just shredded our feet for the brief window of childhood that will soon be gone….then, THEN the Matrix loses its hold.
Happy Friday! Enjoy! You and hubby go play pirate and slave girl, and maybe even let him wear the eyepatch this time 😀 .”
And with that, Bailey and I are off to Maryland for a home-grown writer’s retreat with Susan Reiss. We’re going to brainstorm magnificent plots, create crazy characters, and WRITE! Oh, and I’m teaching a kids’ creative writing workshop on Tilghman Island while I’m there. Hope this week holds as much fun for you as it does for me!
