I'm not interested in THAT point of view.

(***see below)

I've spent a fair amount of time in ladies' locker rooms.  Enough to sort of...well...not care much about any of whatever goes on in there.  When I was younger, sure I was probably a bit curious, but I'd say that now, I'm impervious to the various states of undress. 

I don't care if you make yourself a terrycloth tent out of 12 towels and cover up everything but your elbow.

I don't care if you are completely naked and swinging your towel around your head like a helicopter. 

I don't care if you are flip-flopped or bare footed or walking around in wet, squishy socks.  
I don't care if you come into the sauna nude.  With no towel even to sit on.  I don't think it's particularly wise to slow roast your labia on a slab of 197 degree cedar, but that's entirely your own business. 

If you, in all your naked glory, want to sit across from me in the sauna, I don't care. 

But here's where I'm gonna go ahead and take exception.  When you pull one knee up to your chin and just sit there, like your crotch isn't waaayyyy too close to my face, and waaayyyy too exposed.  To this I say "What is wrong with you?  Did your mother not teach you about keeping your knees together and ankles crossed when you are wearing a skirt (or, you know, nothing!), or were you just not listening?"

I don't think that I, or anyone except your highly-paid gynecologist and maybe your waxologist, if you so choose to exercise that option someday in the future, should be privy to THAT point of view.

Am I wrong here?  Did I miss something in the locker room etiquette handbook? 

***Oh. My. God.  I googled ladies locker room images, and my eyeballs are burning.  BURNING.  Google, you are a perv.  No women's locker rooms look like that.  What is wrong with YOU?

Captured

Just a plastic dinosaur...

There is a small, plastic dinosaur that lives on the rim of my kitchen sink.  I love that stupid dinosaur.  Lakeland put it there one day and said it was "to keep me company while I do the dishes". 

While I am scraping plates, washing the coffee pot, rinsing out whatever needs to be rinsed out, scrubbing pans, or just standing at the sink talking, that little dinosaur looks up at me with his indents-for-eyes, shimmering green and brown skin, and one streak of red paint that was accidently splashed on him during the millionth time I cleaned preschool-size paintbrushes, and reminds me to:

Be Kind.  For no particular reason.

Notice stuff.  Especially little stuff.

Let there be a little clutter.  Everything doesn't have to be perfect.

Gift the things I have to give.  Affection doesn't need to be wrapped up in a big, fancy package.

Feel Love.

Now go forth and spread joy.  Hand out wads of your own version of trinkets.  It'll be so fun.  

Reflections from a water park

Lakeland and I went to a water park last week.  Just thought I'd share the following:

• There are 8,000 hardworking lifeguards constantly hyperventilating into their whistles, and there is not one kid in the place who could give two shits.  I'm serious.  Kids are oblivious to those chirping whistles as well as every single posted rule.  They effectively flip those lifeguards their mini middle fingers the moment before they dive into the slide upside down and face first (a highly illegal maneuver and oft broken water park rule, by my observation). 

• At least 50% of the moms I saw are replicas of my favorite U.S. Olympic beach volleyball team, Kerri Walsh and Misty May.  Bronzed.  Abs.  More abs.  Cute, round butts.  And lots of braided high ponytails with visors.  I contemplated this while leisurely chomping on an $8 cardboard bucket full of fries. 

• The wave pool.  Oh, the wave pool.  (In case you are unaware, a wave pool is a giant pool that intermittently turns into a violent tsunami before calming down to its original state.)  These pools contain a billion bodies just senselessly bouncing off one another.  They are so packed full of people in sustained motion that if you saw it from an airplane, it'd look like a giant, wildly colored beehive.  So the deal is, if you are responsible for a kid under 4 feet tall, you get delegated (by whistle) to the part of the wave pool that is two and a half feet deep.  Which is precisely the point where the waves break and absolutely crush the little kids to smithereens.  These poor, tiny people go from having the grandest time frolicking in calm, waist deep water, to half-drowning while taking severe beatings by all of the big kids that wash up with the waves.  Repeatedly.  Like...every 30 seconds.  I saw several kiddos get creamed by waves/big kids, scraping the joy right off their faces and onto the concrete bottom of the pool.  They'd pop up, bloody and screaming, reaching for the hands (perched on the shapely hips) of their professional volleyball player mothers. 

• And it's not hazardous for just the kids.  I was, at all times, poised in a defensive position...soft kneed, hands advanced, fingers splayed in anticipation of a takeout. When the waves stopped trying to murder the children, I found myself instantly relieved that my knees didn't get blown out by some errant kid flying through on a tube. 

• I swear, it's places like this where adult sensibility and reason fly right off the handle.  Water parks, theme parks, carnivals, zoos, funerals, airports...these are the places where parents go and Absolutely. Lose. Their. Shit.  I saw this dad, who I bet isn't a total disaster on most days, but on this day...he was a nightmare.  He had three boys with him, young teens maybe.  I didn't see what led him to throw his hands in the air and begin a tirade that would have made the father from "A Christmas Story" proud, but the dude had zero qualms about using seriously inappropriate language at a decibel level that couldn't be ignored.  Additionally, I saw several women who, while waiting (bare-footed in standing sludge) in a stagnant line at the concessions, tired children slung across their bodies, rip apart concession staff and/or equally uncomfortable and frustrated women.  I think the only thing that brought these people back to reality from basic survival mode was the warble of a dozen whistles.  So, as it turned out, all those lifeguards weren't wasting their breath.