Braless Days and Braless Niights...

Ever have one of those days when all you really want to do is take your bra off?  

I'm having one of those lives, I think.

It's no great mystery (to me, anyway) that I'm a fairly smart girl... I was born on the cusp of Sagittarius and Capricorn (December 20... which is both incredibly fabulous as well as hideously sucky, both at the same time)  and spent most of my childhood deep in the throes of the Land of the Goat. (For those of you who follow astrology, you'll be all nodding your heads and going "Dayum... you must have been a HUGE pain in the ass as a child!  How did no one ever tape your butt cheeks together and shove you in a locker?" and for those of you who don't?  It means I was kind of exceptional and advanced, precocious, even... and didn't bother to hide it.  Think Sheldon Cooper meets the Smart Girl from Scooby Doo, only with pigtails, an adorable little turned up nose, big brown eyes, and a snotty attitude.)

Except I wasn't.  I was born next door to the Sign of the Goat.

My parents, being educators, didn't bother to curb my obnoxiousness.  If anything, they encouraged it.  They were all, "I know!  Let's teacher her how to sing all her nursery rhymes in Latin when she's 2 and have her perform them at board meetings!  That'll KILL them!"  And so they did.

Then they were all, "You know what would be a GREAT idea?  Let's have her READING AT A 6TH GRADE LEVEL WHEN SHE'S 4!!  THAT WILL MAKE HER THE MOST WELL LOVED CHILD IN PRESCHOOL!"

So I did.  I would peruse the Reader's Digest Condensed Books and look up the words I didn't understand in the Oxford English Dictionary.  While the other "kidneygardeners" (whom I felt it was my duty to correct and educate, I mean, MY GOD... who the hell were their parents?  Some ignorant yokels who were breeding willy-nilly in the backwoods of California's Bay Area?) were reading Jack and Jill, I was perusing Time Magazine and trying to finish Gone With The Wind while tolerating the incredible stupidity of Scarlett O'Hara.  Bonnie Blue Butler was a complete imbecile if falling off a pony rendered her dead, Scarlett. I'm pretty sure that's when I invented the Subtle Eye roll.  It's different than the regular eye roll, where you roll your eyes obviously and deliberately to let the other person realize you think they're wearing their ass as a hat.  No, the SUBTLE eye roll (spell check keeps trying to change "eye roll" to "egg roll"... fuck you, spell check... I don't need your help) is when you quietly wait until the other person is finished being moronic and begins to walk away, and you roll your eyes politely to yourself, while mentally slapping them upside their dayum stupid heads.  

Then you go back to reading your 1200 page book while the other peasants in your  Kindgergarten class insist on calling it "Kidneygarden," playing house, and reading Dr. Seuss.

Which was, in my 5 year old opinion, little more than a big fat waste of time.

Unfortunately, my parents didn't have the common sense to let me skip all the bullshit of elementary school and just go to high school, where I obviously belonged.

5 year old me knew that Dr. Seuss was just a desperate over-rhymer.

Would you like to know how to make every adult in the history of the world hate your child?

Because my parents could have written a book on it.

Here's how:

Turn off the television when she's 7, teach her to repeat, "Television is destroying the minds of the youth of America and creating a nation of illiterates" so that she can tell all of her friends and teachers how fucking stupid they are when they're talking about the freaking Brady Bunch, and then hand her the Encyclopedia Britannica and tell her to read it.  All 26 volumes.  Which she'll do, because she doesn't have tv and she's BORED OUT OF HER FUCKING MIND.

To entertain herself, she'll do things like inform her slightly racist grandmother than her father is half black, which is why her sister has curly hair. (And which her grandmother will believe for years after, until finally bringing it up at a family get together and shocking the shit out of her parents upon finding out about their African American heritage.)

Or announce, at Easter dinner, when being asked by her grandfather what she wants to be when she grows up, that she plans on moving to New York and becoming a call girl.

Or she'll possibly spend an entire afternoon artfully placing burrs in the very long hair of the horrible little girl who lives next door to her because she's fed up with her stupid questions and non-stop tattling, then convincing said horrible little girl that she's a witch and will put a spell on her if she so much as breathes a word about  it after she needs 14 inches of her hair cut off.

On the other hand, she might also convince herself that the bedtime prayer "Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep" is on par with a Death Sentence and will lie awake each night waiting to die, thanks to the oh so comforting line "If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take."

(That's right, Children's Bedtime Prayer... I blame YOU for my Ambien addiction.)

She will also know way more about serial killers than anyone has a right to know.

(I lived in the Bay Area during the whole Zodiac Killer debacle.  I was 5 and read the papers every day to see if the bastard had been caught.  My walks home from school by myself because my parents didn't love me were fraught with terror.)

And then she'll spend the rest of her life annoying people with useless information, kicking ass at Jeopardy (which is only beneficial if you actually audition and then, you know, win) and no one will ever want to play Trivial Pursuit with her, ever.

And she will watch endless hours of Snapped! plotting the perfect murder...

(Kidding... kidding...)

I hope you're happy, Mom and Dad.

Anyway, before you get too sad for me, right around my 14th birthday I suddenly was overcome by Sagittarianism.

Seriously.

I went to bed a Goat and woke up an Archer.

And since the sign of the Archer is mythical and mystical and is part horse, that's wayyyyyy more interesting that being a GOAT.

See what I mean?

Those of you who actually know me will read this and be all, "Well THAT certainly makes more sense..." because really, it does.  

But here's the thing:  At the time of my transformation from Goat to Archer, I hadn't even studied astrology yet.  (I was getting to it... It was next on my list of Things To Study That No One Else Cares About.)

Magically, mysteriously, almost like Tinkerbell (who was a famous Sagittarian, fyi) had landed on my pillow and sprinkled me with fairy dust, I awoke from the Sleep of the Obnoxious Know-it-all to the Wakefulness of the Girl Who Knows Her Hair Is Perfect.

That's right, bitches... I became that girl.

Okay, not entirely, but way more than I was the night before when I went to bed.

I merged into puberty without a zit on my face.  My hair feathered like Farrah Fawcet's, my boobs emerged from the confines of my chest, and I was so busy developing my mad flirting skillz that I totally didn't have time to educate the world with my massive amounts of knowledge.

I spent high school talking to whoever was sitting behind me and not paying attention, EVER, to the teacher.

I passed high school with flying colors because somewhere inside me, the Goat still had control over my brain.

Eventually, my Goat and my Archer melded into something of a compromise... In other words, I am an underachieving party girl who can still kick ass at Jeopardy and Trivial Pursuit, but who hasn't done a damn thing about it.

I never bust my ass if I don't have to, I have ZERO time management skills, I AM always faithful, I DO play for keeps, I really DO mean well, even when my foot is hanging out of my mouth, which is often is, but sadly, most of all, I've turned being a couch potato into an Olympic Event.

Which brings me back to taking my bra off.

I was chatting with a friend the other night on Facebook and asked him what his idea of a perfect evening was.  He said something like, "Go out for a nice dinner, come home, take a long walk, then watch a movie or tv or something."

And I'm all, in my head, going "Uh huh... I can get on board with the going out to dinner, but where does this "walking" shit come in?  How about go out for a nice dinner, take a nice drive, come home, put on sweats, take off my damn bra, and spend the rest of the night lying on the couch eating popcorn and watching Big Bang Theory reruns on TBS?  What kind of idiot walks when he can drive?"

And that's when it occurred to me that I might have a problem.

Whenever Dan wants to spend a weekend doing something like go to a baseball game (shoot me now, seriously... THERE IS NOTHING MORE BORING THAN BASEBALL)  or go to a barbeque or whatever, and I'll make "eh" noises, and he'll say, "Well, what do YOU want to do?" and ALLLL of my replies begin with, "Stay home, lie around in sweats..."

What's implied but isn't said is, "You know, do something where I don't have to wear a bra.  Or real pants."

If I had no standards the two wouldn't necessarily be mutually exclusive but sadly, what with the onslaught of camera phones, I'm loathe to leave the house in pants that don't zip and my boobs free-falling, know what I mean?

The day I appear in a People of Walmart photo is the day that I go all Thelma and Louise with myself and drive the asshole who took my picture off a cliff.

This is not me.  I swear.  No, really.  It isn't.  *cough*

I figure with all my smarts, I should be able to come up with the perfect job where I don't ever have to take off my jammies OR put on a bra.

I had a brief inspiration, where I was all, "OOH!  I know!!  Phone sex operator!"  and then I was all, "Scratch that... too much work. Plus I couldn't eat popcorn or watch Murder She Wrote at the same time."  Plus I'd have to lie all day about what I was wearing because no one wants to hear, "So I'm lying here in my gray sweats with the hole in the crotch and the really thin areas of fabric where my thighs rub together when I walk..."

Or do they?

I don't know, because I refuse, on principle alone, to read 50 Shades of Gray, which may or may not be about having sex in gray sweatspants.

So yeah... phone sex operator is out.  For now.  At least until I'm not too fat for real pants anymore.

Or buy some bigger pants, whichever.

Back to the drawing board...

Sweats and no bra, sweats and no bra...

Oooh!  OOOOOH!!!  I COULD BE A PROFESSIONAL BLOGGER AND NOT GET PAID FOR IT!!

BOOOOOO-YAHHH, REAL PANTS!  SCREW YOU, BRA!!!

It's on, bitches.

Oh wait...

I'm already doing that.

So why the fuck do I get up in the morning and put on a bra?

Oh yeah... Now I remember.