Slippery Slope

Those who know me personally can vouch for the fact that looking put-together is barely important to me. Don’t get me wrong: I want everyone to think I’m gorgeous; I just don’t want to actually have to put effort into the process. I smear some eyeliner and mascara close to my eye area early in the morning, and if it sticks, it sticks. If it doesn’t, I guess my winning smile has to do the rest of the work.

There is, however, one area where I will not compromise: I will not wear elastic-waisted pants to the grocery store. Quick definition: elastic waisted pants are things like sweatpants, fleece pants, yoga pants, fat pants, stretch pants….you get the picture. I call them the pants that aren’t allowed to leave the house. When I go to the grocery store I have to put on pants with a zipper. They don’t have to be dress pants, but they at least have to be jeans.*

Why do I do this? Well, I have a theory. My theory is that we are all perched smack dab in the middle of a slippery slope. The top of the slope represents our absolute ideal selves, and the bottom of the slope represents our absolute worst selves. The slippery slope, as its name implies, is slippery, and falling down is easier than it looks, so it takes constant vigilance to make sure that we’re not ten inches lower than we were yesterday. The good news is that we can move up, but it takes hard work.

Now, if you’ve envisioned yourself on your own personal slippery slope as you’ve read this, you might have also envisioned what your worst self looks like. Maybe the bottom of your slope is depression, and your worst self is a crying mess who can’t get off of the couch. Maybe the bottom to you is losing control of your health, and your worst self is massively overweight, and taking thirty prescription medicines a day. Maybe your bottom is professional failure, and your worst self is stuck in an unfulfilling job, with no promise for mobility, and no recognition for your efforts. MY bottom is a loss of self-discipline, and my worst self is a woman who goes to the grocery store in fleece sweatpants with one fuzzy sock and one dryer sheet stuck to the leg.

Now, personally, I see people at the grocery store in much worse get-ups than fleece sweatpants. For some reason, I seem to see a lot of transvestites with 3 days worth of stubble and wigs that are in desperate need of an appointment with a hairbrush. I also see a lot of college-age girls wearing sweats with their sorority letters on them, tee-shirts that don’t quite cover their newly burgeoning spare tire, and last-night’s hair. But the fleece sweatpant, to me, represents a certain level of desperation. They are, essentially, the closest thing to just wearing a blanket out of your house. Basically saying, “Listen, I find the transition from my sleeping self to my waking self too definitive. Let me do something to blur the line.” The addition of the sock and dryer sheet further states, “Fully separating laundry is for suckers. Sockie, we’re going on an adventure!” This is not for me. My fully-ensconced-at-the-mid-point-of-my-slope self says that laundry needs to know its place, and it takes a strong woman to wrestle it into submission.

My rational self tells me that wearing fleece sweatpants to the grocery store will not, in fact, guarantee me a future full of bad, undisciplined choices. I won’t start eating fried Twinkies for breakfast, or abandon my regular exercise schedule for watching Honey Boo Boo marathons on TLC. The part of me that believes in the slippery slope, however, has the voice of Mrs. Sparsit** in my head, warning that one false move will take me down a shamed staircase, which, inevitably ends in a pair of fleecy pants and unmated socks. And that just will not do.


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* The one exception to this rule was last summer when I was studying for the bar.  In those last three weeks, when I was well and fully crazy, I wore shorty shorts and the tiniest tank top I had EVERYWHERE.  The feel of regular-sized clothes on my skin made me start to flail.  Blame the bar exam, not me.   
** Look it up!  That's what Google is for!

My Superior Favorite Things

Some time ago, I wrote a post about all the things Ihate.  It was harder than it sounds, because, I didn’t want to put any obvious stuff like, “I hate injustice and baby killers,” even though I mostly do.  Anyway, one of my readers, who is ridiculously Zen-like, and a much kinder human than I, asked, “Hey, why don’t you make a list of the things you love?”  My response: “Because that’s not funny.”  I mean, face it, you wouldn’t be reading this blog if every week was a recitation of my gratitude.  You’ve got better things to do, and so do I.  But since that remark, I’ve felt a challenge.  Could I smack that favorite-things hawking shill Oprah with my list of Superior Favorite Things?  Well, I’ll give it my best:

1.       I love making fun of Oprah, and nobody will ever stop me.  Except, maybe, Oprah. 

2.       I love when people tweet insane things under the misguided belief that the First Amendment has magical powers that prevent the consequences of foolhardy actions.

3.       If I had a Twitter account, I would tweet things like, “Taylor Swift looks like a crafty ferret.”

4.       By the way, I love Taylor Swift.  She is making serious bank, despite the fact that she only has a three-note range. 

5.       I love when people get all angry that Lena Dunham asserts her completely amazing existence, despite the fact that she is 13 pounds overweight, and it has been awful for her her whole life. 

6.       I love Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson, even though he represents so many things I don’t like, e.g., intentional baldness, nicknames in quotes, tattoos, ironically arched eyebrows, and the CFL. 

7.       I love that we all continue to pretend that Delaware is a real state, instead of a holograph that solely exists for shady corporations and so Sugar Ray Leonard can pretend he was born somewhere, instead of spawned from moonlight and pure awesomeness.

8.       Speaking of Delaware, I love Joe Biden.  Don’t act like you don’t.   

9.       I love every single thing about the phrase “Nuns on the Run.”  Everything.  I want this on my tombstone. 

10.   Also: Goose on the Loose.  Hysterical.  Seriously.

11.   I love Community, even without Dan Harmon.

12.   I love when somebody puts a racist/classist/homophobic comment on USAToday.com, and fails to correctly distinguish between there/their/they’re, or your/you’re, so that everybody can tell that it’s just an idiot posting. 

13.   I love washing my hands, but that’s because I have OCD. 

14.   And I love having OCD, because it makes my hands really clean.

15.   I love that, every time my dog sniffs her own butt, she seems surprised, like, “Hmmm, I don’t believe we’ve met, butt.” 

16.   I love the term Lazy Susan.  That Susan must have been a real piece of work.

17.   I love scaring the mailman, even though I know it’s wrong.

18.   I love, and I mean LOVE elderly men, especially when they wear old-timey hats.

19.   I love Todd Rundgren, and if I could only choose only one person with whom to repopulate the world after an apocalypse, it would totally be him. 

20.   I love people who get this blog.  Holla!

21.   I love Michael Phelps’s lateral lisp, piranha teeth, and underbite. 

22.   I also loved when he and his dumb model girlfriend broke up.  I am totally team Allison Schmitt.  She and Michael Phelps would have superbabies.

23.    I love it that when I tell my son that he has to check the house for killers, he’s just like, “Okay.” 

24.   For the record: I love my son, my family, my dog, baseball, and the Buckeyes.  And you, even though I've been trying to keep that a secret.

 

25.   I love that I’m always right about everything all the time.

 

Diner Gators

Recently, my old cell phone took an unfortunate bath in the sink, and I had to buy a new phone – something I did not want to do, as I enjoyed my old, low-tech phone that dropped calls and blatantly refused to send or receive text messages on a regular basis.

But I got a new phone.  An iPhone 4, which is not as fancy as an iPhone 5, but it only cost 99 cents, so I wasn’t complaining.  In any event, my new phone has a predictive text feature, also known as autocorrect, which means that I can have the fattest, stupidest thumbs in the world, getting almost every letter of my text messages wrong, but my phone will still figure out what I’m trying to say, and send the right message.  It is pretty amazing, but it is downright delightful when the phone gets it wrong.

Most have you have probably heard of the site damnyouautocorrect.com.  It is full of autocorrect miscues.  I have a hard time buying many of the autocorrects on the site, because it seems like all of them are sexual, and my phone isn’t a pervert that way.  What my phone did, instead, was come up with the greatest television show idea ever conceived: Diner Gators.

Here’s what happened.  I was texting back and forth with my friend Karen on a Tuesday night, and I was telling her about a hilarious show that I was watching on ABC called Suburgatory.  Now, maybe this show isn’t regularly funny, but I saw about half of one episode, and it was hilarious.  I texted Karen the following message: “I am watching a hilarious show called Suburgatory.”  My phone, however, corrected the message to, “I am watching a hilarious show called Diner Gators.”

I caught the error immediately, and re-typed “Suburgatory,” which my phone then changed to “Synergy Torts.”  Karen responded, “TLC?”  which is why I adore Karen.  It was also completely appropriate, considering that TLC would, indeed air both Diner Gators and Synergy Torts.  Here’s the way I envision those shows going:

DINER GATORS:  You’ve seen Gator Boys, and you’ve seen Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, but you’ve never seen anything like Diner Gators!  Join TLC deep in the Louisiana Bayou, as we follow the Robineaux family, at their family diner, the Robineaux Gator Diner.  What’s on the menu?  Gators, of course!  You will love trying to interpret the delightful Creole patois of the Robineaux clan, and be clamoring for your own helping of their delicious Three Gator Gumbo.  Diner Gators: it’s what’s cookin’.

SYNERGY TORTS: Joss Johnson knows two things: the law, and yoga.  TLC follows Joss in her real life journey, as she navigates the cutthroat world of toxic tort litigation, and balancing 60 hour work weeks with shoulder stands, chaturanga dandasana, and downward dogs, not to mention her precocious 2-year-old daughter, Paxton, and hubby Josh.  Life is a balancing act, and Joss Johnson is all about achieving balance.  Synergy Torts: feel the power (yoga).