Are you a fucking bear or something?

Hello all!  Obviously, surgery put me on a forced hiatus -- except for the posts that I wrote ahead of time and then scheduled for dates.  Sorry to reveal the wizard behind the curtain.

I'm crabby this morning.  Why?  Because of my upstairs neighbors.  I realize that I am part of the problem because I have no patience with other people.  Any apartment I've lived in has resulted in a feud with either my upstairs or downstairs counterpart.  I can't stand my current upstairs neighbors. I haven't been able to stand them since they moved in almost two years ago.

When they first moved in, it was a mother, her eight(ish) year old son, and her 'fiance'.  The fiance used to sit on the balcony smoking and talking very loudly on his cell phone.  I'm assuming he was a fiance because he would often yell at her about, "Why would I want to marry you if you don't know how to clean a house?"  His phone conversations were to his lawyer and some person that he must've gotten into a physical altercation with because he'd call the person and say shit like, "I could get into a lot of trouble for calling you because it would would considered threatening my victim, but you should know that if you testify against me, I'm going to get you."

(In)Appropriate Spinster Behavior

Very cute, very smart, very attractive 25 year old male walks into hotel bar and chooses the seat next to the 41 year old spinster:

25YO:  What's good to eat?

SS: [slurping her cosmo and surveying the scenery]  They say the seafood here is good.  I don't like seafood, but I've witnessed people losing themselves over the Red Snapper soup.

25YO:  [grinning]  Sold.

Two hours later:

SS:  What's your IQ?

25YO:  I don't know if I believe in those tests.  Do you?

SS: [shrugging]  I took one once.  It was supposed to take 90 minutes.  I finished in 45 while I was watching TV and scored a 148.

25YO: [gulping]  That's like a genius.

SS:  [shrugging again]  More like an evil sexy genius.

25YO:  How old are you again?

SS:  41.

25YO:  [choking on water]  Not even possible.

SS:  [as she signs her bill]  Totally true.  Terrifying, isn't it?

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Embrace it, my sweets.  They are eager to learn and we are the best teachers they could hope for.  More importantly, our younger sisters need us to teach these young men the ways of the world.

Napping: What do men know that we don't?

I love naps.  It is vexxing to me that, in my lifetime, I have not perfected the art of the nap.  It eludes me like the Holy Grail has eluded treasure hunters for centuries.  I dream about the perfect nap that finds me waking refreshed and without a care in the world.  Of course I've had a few good naps in my life -- but I can never remember how to get there again.  My women friends have expressed the same frustration:  How did I do that again?  Therefore, I turned to researching the species that can outnap a woman -- men.

I'm not including cats because I'm not certain they are actually napping or just laying there with their eyes closed plotting world domination.  Scientists will tell you they're napping -- but they also do not believe that animals are capable of thinking or emotion.  Any Crazy Cat Lady would tell you that is not true and have more than ten examples of things her cats have done to prove otherwise.

I digress.  Back to my 'research'...

Cleaning tips from the Spinster

After having recently been at a dinner party and sat with a bunch of married with children women, I was again reminded that this life of a spinster isn't so bad.  One of the big reasons?  Cleaning.  First of all, there is only one person making the mess -- me.  Therefore, there isn't as much mess ... maybe.  Second, how clean (or not clean) my place is affects only my well being.  I don't have to go to Parents' Night at the school and be concerned that the other moms are going to be whispering to each other, "There she is...  Yes I've been to her house.  You know the head lice epidemic started there."  Speaking of head lice, RLF's step daughter just had two go-rounds with that one.  Cleaning up after that would tempt me to just move and buy all new furniture.

As I listened to the woes of cleaning up after a husband and children, I was happy for my very simple cleaning routine.  Okay, my lazy cleaning routine.  There was a time in my life when I was fastidious.  Half of every Saturday was spent dusting, vacuuming, cleaning surfaces.  I was so psycho that the tops of the heat registers were cleaned every week.  Now they only get attention about twice a year.  I had come to the conclusion that I wanted to tempt fate and staph infections.

With that in mind, I have only five tips that are enough to get the Sassy Spinster through the day.

Spinster vs. The Mother in Law

No no no .. My status of Spinster is not being compromised by my going out and getting a mother-in-law... I am, however, getting ready to do battle with a ferocious mother-in-law -- RLF's MIL.  Now, this isn't going to be a post about how all MILs are spat up from the bowels of hell and put here to challenge marriages.  I don't believe that.  Mother-in-Laws that are from the Ninth Circle are not that way because they are Mother-in-Laws -- it is simply because of who they are.  In my experience, a Mother-in-Law who is despised by a son or daughter-in-law is a person who is universally despised anyway.  It's maybe just a little more irksome because this woman came with the 'Until death parts us' package.

I would like to point out that years ago -- before RLF met her husband -- I gave her advice about choosing her mate.  We were watching an old episode of something on television (it was in black and white and I can't remember what show).  Two bachelors were talking about women and one of them said that you always want to get a good look at their mother because it will tell you what the woman will be like when she gets older.  RLF rolled her eyes, "God I hope my boyfriends don't look at my mom and run the other way because of her."  I kept my mouth shut about that, but offered some advice, "The same is true for women choosing a husband, you know."

She rolled her eyes again, "So you look at their fathers?"  I shook my head, "Nope.  You look at their mothers.  How she acts is going to be how she always acts.  While you may think that you can change the man you marry -- you're never going to change his mother and she's always going to be there.  So, if you can't stand the way she acts, you might not want to marry him -- unless she lives more than two hours away."  She nodded in solemn agreement, "That's an excellent point.  It's probably good my mother lives so far away."  My eyes slid sideways to her.  Hopefully she got my point because, as much as her mother drives me crackers, I was talking about a future husband's mother.

Spinster Name vs. Married Name

Okay...  I haven't been around as much as I intended to be.  Work mostly.  That and not feeling well.  I could have blogged about those things but ... well ... that would just be bitching.  I'm really good at bitching, mind you, but I thought it was best to keep it to myself.

Today I want to talk about "Spinster Name vs. Married Name".  Being a spinster does not mean that a woman is without love in her life.  I, in fact, do have love in my life.  For a number of years, in fact.  Why he has not taken my spinsterhood is a whole long complicated story.  And, I prefer to take credit for it myself.

I will call my sweetie Mr. Man.  I also prefer sweetie to 'boyfriend' or 'significant other' just because I think I'm too old for a boyfriend and, having gone to college in the nineties, I got way overloaded on 'significant other'.  Mr. Man is a huge sports fan and he's an athlete.  This was actually a little bit of a turn off for me because I generally regard that type as 'knuckle draggers'.  Mr. Man, however, has an advanced degree and is very well versed on other topics, so it became palatable.

Over time, his love (he's been a fan since he was a tot) for a particular sports team rubbed off on me and I am now fan-atical about them.  I am speaking about The Green Bay Packers.  My interest in them grew not for their prowess on the field but because of their story.  As I said, I love stories.  I also love history.  There isn't a sports franchise that has a story as rich or a history as long as The Green Bay Packers.  Besides their story and their history, they have Aaron Rodgers and Clay Matthews.  I realize that there are plenty of dirty old women (I have some friends) who would like to see one or both of these young men naked.  Not me -- I would like to serve them some Mac'n'Cheese (with cut up hot dogs) and juice boxes in return for me being able to look at them.

Hmmm.... Maybe dirty old lady who wants to see them naked is less creepy.

Why 'Spinster'?

For some, I know this is a derogatory term because it is also commonly known as 'Old Maid'.  This might cause some to even pity the spinster as she is both old and still a maid (allegedly).  Wikipedia has a good article on the history of spinster.  Personally, I don't see a need to belabor definitions and uses of the word because I don't adhere to them.  Or rather, I'm not afraid of those definitions or uses because they don't scare or offend me even though I'm told that they should.

It's not an effort on my part to try to be 'counter culture' or 'rebellious'.  I guess I've just never been smart enough to be frightened by what it would mean to be in my forties and never married.  At different points in my life I have thought about marriage and children.  There have been times that I've wanted one but not the other, neither, or both.  Seems the children one is falling by the wayside and THAT'S OKAY!  I have one friend who has told me on numerous occasions that my life is will never be fulfilled if I don't have children. I have tried to respectfully disagree.  She hasn't let up, so I now very disrespectfully disagree with her.

How did I get here?

I think we all know the biological way I got into this world, so I will spare you the details of THAT whole debacle.  The question I'll answer is how I got to this place on the world wide web.  I know there are newer, more updated terms than "world-wide web" or "information highway", but I'm an old lady (according to the definition I had of someone my age when I was sixteen) and so would like to cling to the terms that I became accustomed to when this whole infrastructure was being built.

It all started with my parents.  Obviously.  They were foolish enough to believe that, when I was developing into a thinking human being, that it would be appropriate to answer my questions with honest and direct answers instead of 'because'.  If they didn't know the answer, they would sit me down with the appropriate volume of our cherished set of Encyclopedias and figure it out with me.  The only thing this accomplished was to give me the impression that, when I was curious about something, I should ask questions or look up the answer.  What were they thinking?!