Yes, Please

My mother is a peculiar creature. She has a nursing degree, years of experience in the medical field, a stick-thin figure, and an avid belief in eating appropriate-sized food portions.

But, that's just her. As far as she's concerned, the rest of the world needs more fun-sized Snickers bars in their lives. Pronto.

My mother crams her kitchen with jars of seasonal-colored M&Ms, baskets of fun-sized candy bars, and bags upon bags of sugary shit you haven't seen since you were five years old.

Remember Dum Dums?

Gelatin orange slices?

Candy corn?

Laffy Taffy?

Licorice?

Tootsie Roll Pops?

All manner of diabetes death traps sit on her kitchen counters. Candy greets you the moment you enter the door.

Laura: "We need to run to my parents' house for a minute. Is that okay?"

Ian: "Sure. I can eat candy. I hope your mom still has those gelatin orange slices. And Butterfingers. Oooo, and candy corn."

Laura: "I'm sure she will. She never eats that candy. I swear, she's trying to bait children so she can steal them and raise them."

My mom feels a twinge of sadness that her children have grown up and moved out of the house. She makes up for it by cooking fatty meals for us whenever we visit.

Laura: "We're eating dinner with my parents tonight, remember?"

Ian: "Cool."

Laura: "She's making corn casserole so, you know, prepare yourself."

Ian: "That stuff's The Shit. I'm going to hate myself tonight, aren't I?"

Laura: "Yes. As will I. She uses an entire stick of butter in that thing. Plus, she adds cornbread made with honest-to-God, pioneer-authentic lard. Lard, Ian. And we both know we'll eat the whole casserole. Remember when the two of us ate that entire rotisserie chicken? "

Ian: "Your mom must look at me and think, "Ian's a poor scrawny boy. He needs more ham."

Laura: "That reminds me. Mom's cooking a ham tonight."

Ian: "She's making me fat, Laura."

Laura: "It's her mission in life. Have you seen the size of her pets? Her cats look like beach balls."

Ian: "Seriously, I'll eat an entire plate of food, and then your mom will ask, 'Would you like more ham, Ian? More potatoes? More salad? More cheese ball? More brownies?' And I always say, 'Yes, please.' To all of it. It's a sickness."

The fun extends to Winnie. When Winnie spends a day with Grandma, she devours bacon, chips, crackers, tuna, bits of steak, meatloaf, and, in all honesty, probably an entire damn cheese wheel.

My cries of, "No table food, Mom! No table food!" fall on deaf ears.

After an entire weekend with my mom, Winnie has been know to lurch miserably to my car.

At home, she'll lie around listlessly, until I scoop her up and run her into the bathroom, just in time for her to hork up a garbage can's worth of food.

We just consumed a combined 14,000 calories at Laura's mom's house, and we think we're going to die.

No, really, this is the face of despair... man, that ham was good.

I Am Woman; Hear Me Snore

I am terrible at playing housewife. For one, I never cook. I also find cleaning house tiresome after working a 40 hour week.

I mean, God, people. How am I supposed to find time to Google pictures of hot, obscure rock stars (hellooooo, Win Butler) and watch blurry Youtube clips of South Park (despite having every single South Park episode in high definition) if I spend my free time cooking and cleaning?

It's called priorities, you know?

I consider myself an "eleventh-wave" feminist. Basically, I cherry-pick my feminist sensibilities based on whatever conveniences me.

You see, I can wear make-up and put dresses on the dog and yell for Ian to kill the slug in the bathtub, because as an eleventh-wave feminist, I embrace my femininity.

I am female, dammit! I don't burn bras; I love bras! I celebrate gender differences! I am soft and emotional! I am womanly! I do womanly things!

But the minute talk of cooking comes up? Like, cooking actual meals? OH, HELL NO. I AM A FEMINIST, AND I DON'T DO THAT SHIT.

Ian: "I always cook. You haven't cooked a single meal since I've been with you."

Laura: "You are correct."

Ian: "You don't even try to deny it!"

Laura: "Why would I try to deny it? I don't cook."

Ian: "What if we have kids? Would you feed them macaroni and cheese every night for dinner?"

Laura: "And chicken nuggets from the microwave."

Ian: "!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Laura: "Shut up; it's protein."

Ian: "I think I'm going to have issues with this."

Laura: "I'd nuke a can of corn, too. We can tell the kids corn's a vegetable, even though it's a grain."

Ian: "I'm not sure that's going to work."

Laura: "Hey, I can make milk. Have you seen how awesome these things are?"

Ian: "No complaints here."

Laura: "I'll breastfeed until the kid's 5 or 6. Then he can go on the reduced lunch program at school. And the reduced breakfast program. They make breakfast, too."

Ian: "............ I think I'm going to have issues with this."

Laura: "I bet I can make enough milk for you, too."

Ian: "Wouldn't breast milk taste bad?"

Laura: "No. I've read it tastes sweet. You'd love it."

Ian: "It's too bad you can't blog about this."

Laura: "Or can I?"

Winnie, the Albino Mutant Alien Rat

Once every three months, something magical happens at the Winiferd house. Every three months, Winnie gets a haircut, and New Daddy professes that he maybe, sorta, kinda likes Winnie.

You see, Winnie's haircuts strip her to the core, revealing a severe lack of "dog" in her DNA.

Winnie with long hair looks like an adorable puppy. Once sheared, she morphs into something...reptilian. Something cartoonish. Something mythological. Something like Falcor, the Luck Dragon, from The Never Ending Story:

Ian dislikes dogs, but he loves Luck Dragons.

The only time I've ever heard him say "awww!" over the dog was when she trotted into the house after a haircut, looking like an albino mutant alien rat, and jumped into his arms. Or perhaps he scooped her up.

Either way, he melts over having a Luck Dragon in the house.

Ian: "You should keep her in this haircut all the time!"

Laura: "That would cost a lot of money."

Ian: "She's so tiny! Spottswood looks like a giant next to her. She looks like Lady Gaga. No, wait, she looks like Splinter, the rat."

Laura: "She looks like Falcor."

Ian: "Yeah! She looks like Falcor."

Laura: "How come you only like her sheared?"

Ian: "Because then I can see her eyes, and they look so expressive. Her long hair hides her eyes, which creeps me out."

On Sundays nights, Winnie grows lethargic, exhausted from a weekend with no naps and too much bacon. This past Sunday night, Winnie the Luck Dragon lounged around sleepily, occasionally gazing up at us through alien eyes.

Ian: "Look at your dog."

Laura: "What about her?"

Ian: "Just... look at her." <contented sigh>

I'm reveling in New Daddy's brief adoration for Winnie. Next week, she'll be just another energetic puppy at the receiving end of New Daddy's high-decibel threats.

But, for now, we're both in love with this angelic face.

Laura, the Half-Ginger, Half-Day Walker, Red-Headed Mutant Girl

I have naturally red hair.

It's a darker red, dark enough to almost qualify as Auburn. Almost. As a teenager, my attempts to call my hair "auburn" were met with, "Dude. Your hair is red."

Touche. 

Growing up with red hair is difficult. As a very small child, I was bald until the age of two. By age three I had a head full of red ringlet curls. Red ringlet curls. I wore a metaphorical "Kick Me" sign.

In addition to red ringlet curls, I was horribly, terribly, painfully shy. Adults would zoom in, hands outstretched, desperate to rub my head and ask the source of my hair color. What, it came from your grandmother? And your father? You don't say! 

I never made a peep during those encounters. I hid behind my mother.

By about age 5, my ringlet curls straightened naturally. My hair's thick, so we think the weight of my hair murdered the curls. My mom was devastated. I was ecstatic. I think my immense fortune proves something: there is a Santa Claus.

By age 8, I had shed a good deal of my shyness. I was a happy-go-lucky kid, who made friends easily and loved to sing, dance, read, and write.

People of Earth: no amount of happy-go-lucky disposition, faintly discernible talent, and oodles of friends will counter the effects of having red hair as a child.

You are going to be teased.

You will invite the concerned looks of friends, who will mournfully ask, "Do you like having red hair?"

Boys will sing the "Big Red" jingle from the Big Red chewing gum commercials to you.

You will be asked if you're married to Al Bundy.

All while attracting the considerable attention of every elderly person within twenty feet of you. All while you retain your fierce apprehension of and shyness around unfamiliar adults.

So when Ian casually remarked, "If we have children, I hope they have your hair," you can understand why I exclaimed, "No, a thousand times no! A pox on thy very thought! 'Tis a cruel vexation! Oh, what a world, what a world..." <melts into a puddle of witch water>

Ian felt a little upset by my reaction.

Ian: "You have beautiful hair. I love it. I don't know anyone else with your shade of red."

Laura: "You don't understand. It's really, really hard to be a kid with red hair. It takes a long time to grow into it. I honestly didn't grow into my hair color until I was 25. Remember, when we saw that movie a few months ago? The one with the spiders? That's when it happened."

Ian: "But... I want us to produce the first child with naturally tan skin and red hair."

Laura: "Ian, that's a fantasy. It's a myth. Like vampires or the Loch Ness Monster or productive Americans. People with dark skin and red hair don't exist."

Ian: "But... I have red hair somewhere back in my gene pool. And I have brown skin. It could happen..."

Laura: "Any child of ours is genetically assured of being timid, bashful, and self-conscious. God, our DNA mixed together? The kid will be a complete hermit. Red hair's just not going to work."

Ian: "But..."

Laura: "And then you have those weirdo men who have red hair fetishes. Gross."

Ian: <Sheepishly> "I was drawn to your red hair from the beginning. Sometimes, I'll wake up early in the morning, right when the light starts streaming through the window, and your hair looks like glistening copper. Then I have trouble going back to sleep because I just want to stare at you."

Laura: <Feels like an ass>

Monday Night Musings: Urine Therapy

Laura: "I read drinking your own urine helps to cure allergies. And sometimes my allergies make me feel desperate enough to try it."

 Ian: "Would you try it? Really?"

Laura: "Eh, I doubt it. Urine therapy makes sense, though. It's the basic principal of immunological therapy. Or homeopathic therapy."

Ian: "People have been doing it since ancient times. It's a really old practice."

Laura: "I bet drinking your own urine prevents cancer."

Ian: "You should start drinking your own pee!"

Laura: "Yeah!"

Ian: "Then we can drink each other's pee!"

Laura: "Yeah!"

Ian: "Would you do that?"

Laura: "Yes. Because then people will know we love each other."

*Winiferd in the Burbs now qualifies as an educational website. Click here to read some hippie's thoughts on the benefits of drinking your own wee wee.

Opening the Winiferd Vault Again: Laura's Modeling Portfolio

This was originally published in 2011 but was removed recently while I interviewed for my new job (for obvious reasons). This post makes me cringe, but it does sorta sum up the first year of Winiferd in the Burbs.

Ian has this peculiar habit of declaring I should have been a model. He sounds sincere when he insists I should be walking the runways instead of doing office grunt work and coaxing the dog to go doo doo.

When we sift through magazines at the grocery store, he'll point to either severely anorexic or severely Photoshopped girls on the cover of Bimbo Weekly or Hollywood Tonight and claim, "This looks like you."

He's not trying to be funny, either. He genuinely thinks I look, well, modelesque. He's adorable in his insistence because he's wearing Laura goggles, and it all springs from a place of love.

Like, remember the 80s, when everyone fell in love with Cabbage Patch dolls? And people paid hundreds of dollars for them? And they looked like Shrek dolls with yarn hair, and they had ridiculous names? ("My Cabbage Patch dolls are Darius Earl and Gertie Darlene! What awesome names!").

But the whole world fell in love with them and thought they were the cutest things ever? EVER? The same dynamic is at work here.

Which is to say, I would be the Cabbage Patch Shrek doll of the modeling world.

Ian: "You missed your calling in life. You should have been a model."

Laura: "I hardly think round faces and oddly proportioned bodies measure up to model standards."

Ian: "No, really. You look like a model."

Laura: "I suppose I could have been a model for the Playtex company. They use plain girls for their ads, because they're trying to appeal to girls who find tampons shocking and sexuality frightening. I could so be the face for them."

Ian: "You have an exotic look because of the red hair. You would stick out among the other models."

Laura: "Plus, if I modeled for Playtex, I bet I'd get free tampons for life. Do you know how much money I'd save? That stuff gets expensive."

Ian: <Slightly defensive> "Well, I think you'd make a great model."

I've decided to stop arguing with Ian and playing the role of, "Woe is me. For I am an ugly, misshapen wench of wretched visage. Thy soul weeps for I suffer from a vengeful society who doth drink the Haterade. Anon!"

I now embrace Ian's emphatic assertion that I am a beautiful, sexy woman, who the world wants, nay, who the world needs to see.

I have put together my modeling portfolio, which I will send to major modeling executives.

These are definitely my best pictures, and as I gaze over them, I know, deep-down, that Ian was right all along. I truly missed my calling in life by choosing graduate school over modeling. I now strive to correct this mistake.

The New Face of Playtex

Esquire's Cabbage Patch Model of the Year 

Pretty hot, right?

I'd like to thank my two patient and cooperative co-models.

Winiferd

Darius Earl 

Special thanks goes to my fashion photographer, Ian

Say good-bye to your dignity, darling. The Playtex Cabbage Patch Shrek Doll post may mark the day Winiferd in the Burbs officially jumped the shark. 

Man, we are so over this shit.

President Harvard

Laura: "Spottswood and Winifred have formal names. Harvey needs one, too."

Ian: "Oh?"

Laura: "Formal names are important. You need them for diplomas and job applications and wedding invitations. If Harvey becomes a president or CEO, he'll need a formal name. President Harvey sounds silly."

Ian: "Yeah."

Laura: "Harvey's formal name shall be Harvard."

Ian: "Cool... Harvard, get your head out of the toilet."

Harvey often gets neglected in the blog. Mainly because blogs involve recording things you do, and Harvey doesn't do anything.

Laura: "Sometimes I forget Harvey exists. I'll go three days without seeing him, and then suddenly remember, "Oh yeah. There's a fat one."

Ian: "That's because he sleeps 23 hours a day."

Laura: "Lucky."

Ian: "I notice him on the window sill occasionally, when he has issues fitting his belly up there."

Laura: "That's more than I notice him."

Ian: "When he dies someday, we won't realize it until a week later. When the smell hits us."

Harvard is a curmudgeonly fellow who suffers from dandruff, dry skin, and excessive shedding.

While Brushing Harvey:

Ian: "Wow! Look how much fur I'm pulling off Harvey! It's like he's birthing kittens!"

Laura: "Spottswood wants a turn."

Ian: "No, Spottswood. You're not as fun to brush."

Ian and I characterize Harvey as deviant who plots schemes of destruction and chaos. This mostly serves to highlight the differences between awkward Harvey and cosmopolitan Spottswood.

How Harvey Gets Food

How Spottswood Gets Food

In reality, Harvey more closely resembles a grumpy old man than a devious villain.

Laura: "You know where Harvard went to college?"

Ian: "Where?"

Laura: "Yale."

Ian: "Nicely played."

Monday Night Musings: Old Daddy

Laura: "You've been New Daddy for a long time. When will you become Daddy?"

Ian: "Never. 'New Daddy' commands respect. Winnie's not allowed to call me 'Daddy'."

Laura: "Have you noticed me trying to casually call you 'Daddy'?"

Ian: "Yes. And I don't like it."

Laura: "Hmm."

Ian: "By the way, if I'm New Daddy, what happened to Old Daddy?"

Laura: "Old Daddy died in a car crash."

Ian: "That's sad."

Laura: "I gave birth to Winnie shortly after the accident."

Ian: "You're Winnie's biological mother?"

Laura: "Yes. Winnie looks like her father. You see, I had sex... with a dog."

Ian: "It's too bad she got his brain instead of yours."

Laura: "Genetics are funny like that."

*Winiferd in the Burbs does not condone bestiality.