still in hollywood
EIGHT GAMES FOR GROWNUPS
1. Be sexy all day.
2. Mentally add, “your face” to everything someone says to you. “Could you update the spreadsheet?” I’ll update your FACE.
3. Encourage everyone. It’s better out loud, but you can do it in your head if you want. Right on, random jogging dude! You’re jogging GREAT! Yeah, heavy things on the bottom—way to bag groceries! You’re bagging like it’s your job! Oh wait it is your job! Etc.
4. For parents: if your child is being grumpy and argumentative, you can respond with “Well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man” and have a silent chuckle at her expense.
5. Casually say, “Oh hi, [pet’s name]” whenever your pet walks into the room. This never fails to amuse me.
6. Use exact change! You probably really do have thirty-two cents! So exciting.
7. Look out for danger. Speeding cars! Sudden sinkholes! That guy has a knife and a crazy look in his eye! Gas tank explosion (a cinematic mind’s-eye occurrence that has guaranteed me a lifetime terror of buying gas)! Hot lava!
8. Okay, this is not a game, but speaking of hot lava: it certainly does not figure into everyday adult life the way I imagined it would when I was a kid. Ditto quicksand.
FIVE MORE WAYS IN WHICH IT RULES TO HAVE AN OLDER KID
1. She’s my garde manger now and is acquiring pretty decent knife skills. (Chef-style knife skills, I mean. Not like West Side Story or anything.) Such small, even dice! I would never have the patience. Our dinners just got a whole lot prettier.
2. Catching a rearview-mirror glimpse of her silently rocking out to Superchunk is the greatest thing ever.
3. Ditto sitting in the salon with my magazine and secretly watching her chat with her nose-ringed, bearded, leather-bear hairdresser.
4. Best 5K partner ever. We have now run 6 races together and just registered for a spring one. Steady, encouraging, doesn’t talk too much. (I’m not the chattiest runner.)
5. Mature enough to be patient with younger kids and assertive with older kids, despite lack of siblings. I’m pretty proud of that. I may have had nothing to do with it, but I’m proud anyway.
FIVE FICTIONAL PLACE NAMES IN WHICH LT AND I LIKE TO SET FICTIONAL SCENARIOS
1. Mangled Scrotum National Park
2. Groinopolis (a city in the Nether Regions of Planet Area)
3. Crotchgrab, North Dakota
4. Danglysac, Arkansas
5. At the corner of Wrinkled and Balls
ONE UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH
It took FOREVER for me to turn 20 years old. I was a baby, and a kid, and a teenager, it lasted ages and ages, and although high school is a bit of a blur I remember quite a lot of my childhood. However, 20 years old to 40 years old is the exact same amount of time and it elapsed in a fucking flash. What was I doing at age 30-whatever? I have no idea unless I think really hard or dig around in the blog archives. If the trend holds, it means that 40 to 60 will go even faster, and imagining this gives me actual stomach flip-flops. Slow down, everything!
—mimi smartypants is asking nicely.