This Post Is Steeped

Today I received an email from an insurance broker about a mix-up, and she very earnestly apologized for the “incontinence”, which has been making me smile all day. I’m sure her coworkers would be more in need of an apology than me, given the puddles and all.

I’ve been re-reading Alias Grace, and in the language of the 1850s, she describes sweeping under a bed and finding a ton of slut’s wool, which is apparently what they used to call dust bunnies, sluts back then being lazy housekeepers and not the whores we think of today. In my own bid to be a fabulous housewife, I moved the couch for the first time in many weeks to sweep behind it and I myself found enough slut’s wool to create my own dusty sheep, so I feel a kinship with all those nineteenth-century sluts.

When Jake started Grade One full time, I had several people ask me what will I do with all my TIME, intimating that I should consider going “back to work”. Did you know I used to have a career? One where I wore pantyhose and high heels and worked on a trade floor for twelve hours a day on average, and I used to cry in the bathroom sometimes, and once a guy flipped out so much that he banged his phone on his desk until it broke and he had to take an anger management course? Good times. Anyway, I never really considered going back to work in that capacity after I left, and it’s good that I didn’t, because then I wouldn’t be available for my current career of “school volunteer”, not to mention my role of slutty housewife.

Yesterday I was a judge at the school science fair, and let me tell you, it was the most fun I’ve ever had in a volunteer capacity. I highly recommend it. I was easily the most excited judge around, walking with my clipboard and asking VERY SERIOUS scientific questions. I loved all the students with their science-y joy and ideas. Changing the world, one science project at a time. One kid was so into his topic of waves and resonance, and so engaged and excited, that I mentioned he might want to consider taking more science once he was in junior high and high school, which subsequently made him even more engaged and excited, that I thought he might spin off the planet right then and there.

Sadly, there was not one baking soda volcano among the bunch. Not one! However, someone had built a Lego robot, and the boys assured me that it was one of the most popular tables, when their classes visited, along with a research project about venom and its uses. Venom! There’s nothing like a potentially deadly substance to get a bunch of third-and-fourth grade boys interested in scientific applications.

And hey, one week until Valentine’s Day! Apparently I will be making approximately one million heart-shaped cookies for the boys’ classes next week, in lieu of cards which they say are “lame” and “stupid”. Well, cookies are the opposite of lame and stupid! Remember that old Tim Hortons’ commercial in which the teenage son bought his mom a tea and said it was steeped, after which she thought “steeped” was the new word to say for something that was cool and used it in all sorts of situations? That’s totally me. I am that mother. Also, cookies in lieu of cards for Valentine’s Day is steeped. STEEPED I SAY.

Someone was asking the other day what men like to receive for Valentine’s Day and I blinked a couple of times. Blink. Blink. I can really only think of two things, and they are pretty obvious: sex and blowjobs. It’s perfect, you don’t need to wrap anything, you don’t need to buy anything, you don’t even need to leave the comfort of your own home. Alternately, you could make a batch of my aphrodisiac blondies. Blondes have more fun, my sweet young blonde yoga friend is always telling me, and I…don’t know if that’s true or not. But these blondies are very fun. Personally I’m hoping for a teddy bear wearing a bee costume emblazoned with “Bee Mine” but I’m not sure if I’ll get that or not. I might have to be satisfied with smooches and general romantic feelings. And maybe a bottle of wine.

Comments

  1. I’ve never heard it called “slut’s wool” before. I hear “slut’s wool” and I think of 70s porn.

    Over the years I have tried to get my husband little gifts for Valentine’s Day, but honestly, he wants chocolate and a blowjob. In that order, if possible. For me to sit and watch a dreary political thriller with him first is always appreciated, too.

    My kids’ school doesn’t do science fairs. I don’t know why. I hated science fair time. There was this one girl in my grade, Melanie – her dad was a science teacher at the junior high in the next district over. She ALWAYS won the science fair. It was the Science Unfair, is what I’m saying.

  2. I can’t believe you’re making fun of incontinent people! You are NOT the woman I thought you were. I am now knitting us all bikinis out of slut’s wool. Which reminds me of when the library tech I used to work with told me about a Roald Dahl book in the school collection that had a poem with the word ‘slut’ in it (meaning untidy person, not sexually promiscuous person) and a parent wanted it covered up. But…. it was a poem…. you think sixth-graders aren’t smart enough to figure it out?

    My husband still hasn’t eaten the creme brulée chocolate bar I gave him for Christmas, so…I’ll be over here limbering up my jaw for Valentine’s Day. Sigh.

  3. And yeah, that Melanie – what an incontinent slut.

  4. Today I saw a typo for a fundraiser where the money raised goes to the Loins Club instead of Lions. LOINS CLUB. Everyone is a member! MEMBER! *chortle*

  5. I’m feeling all slutty now. And apparently, by Hannah’s standards, my HG thinks every Saturday is Valentine’s Day. *THAT’S* why I own a house full of bunnies…… You can find them under the beds, drawers, wardrobes,cupboards and cabinets. I guess I’m double slutty!

  6. How old are your boys again? Mine is 12 and also in the simultaneously too old and too young for Valentine’s Day space, (though he did order a loaf of chocolate-cherry bread for the family from a catalog– I think that will be the extent of his Valentine shopping.) The girl is 7 and embracing the holiday in all its sparkly, beribboned glory.

    AG is one of my favorite MA novels. I am reading MaddAdam right now.

  7. Based on the amount of press releases and pitches I receive about it, incontinence seems to be a real problem these days.
    🙂

  8. Sarah Piazza says

    slut’s wool. wow. wow.

    my first and second graders get just that excited about their academic discoveries. makes me smile.

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  1. […] vacuumed. I moved the furniture in the living room and tried not to die of shame when I saw all the slut’s wool that was hiding under there. I wondered briefly how my dog isn’t bald, since it appears that […]

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