In case you haven’t heard, or maybe don’t care, because you’re happily existing in 60 degree weather, the DC area was just hit by about 6 million feet of snow.

While most people would be glad to have an abundance of snow (skiers, dog sledders, hermits who never leave their houses anyway, cracked-out aliens who can hover above the mess, people with bongs) I am not any one of those people dammit. I love snow, don’t get me wrong. My fantasy of moving to Wisconsin, however, has just died a quick and painless death. I am considering Texas at this point.

Right before the end of the year, we got 19″ of snow. That is a lot of snow, particularly for an area that gets maybe 12″ over the course of a season. The Husband dug us out of that one, in his manly way of avoiding the bored children who were clamoring to leave the house (for the record, none of my kids ever want to play in snow, and therefore I gave up buying them snow gear this season). During this first episode of snowed-insanity, The Husband also managed to destroy the tiny bit of back strength he had after recovering from various spinal injuries over the past 2 years. Gaah.

I’m not sure if there have been other school closings between that raging hemorrhoid snow storm and the one we had last Tuesday. I seem to block out that which is traumatizing, so I’mma just say its been about a month of pure bliss… until Wednesday when we had maybe 4 inches of snow and they closed the schools, Monday’s Teacher Workday.The same teachers I overheard giggling on Tuesday about the snow day (a pox on you all!). So, I have been so busy doing my own shit (and everyone else’s shit ’round this joint), that it wasn’t until my sister and my local friend told me that we were going to get nailed on Saturday, did I even check the weather. That was on Thursday, a/k/a “Denial Day.”  Surely, the fates do not hate me so much as to deliver 3 feet of powdery-white goodness that will only cause heart attacks from shoveling it NOT into my nose, but just off of my sidewalk. What have I done to deserve this and when, exactly, will I have time to get the required food and supplies needed to weather this so-not-happening storm?

So, Denial Day afternoon, I had one hour for grocery shopping, with The Twitches. We got enough food for, oh, 3 days. Mostly chips and candy, some milk, yogurt… um, and pancakes. Maybe that’s when my mind snapped. Faced with the choices in the freezer aisle, maybe there was a little “ping” in my brain that couldn’t be heard because everyone else was being smart enough to buy beer first.  Who gets pancakes, like ever, but especially when faced with the snow storm (literally) of the century? Me, that’s who. You’ll thank me when you want some iHop, but iHop is closed. Auto-pilot.  DENIAL. DAY. We will be fine and I’ll get more on moron Sunday. The rest of these people who are buying candles and batteries are being all panicky-lame. I am too cool to really take this seriously.

After I got home and put away the pancakes, I was greeted with the text on my phone that they pre-closed the schools on Friday in anticipation of the Snowpacalypse. Crizzap. There went another “Ping!” in my brain. So, of course,  I thought it would be wonderful if my friend in Richmond could come join us, weather the storm (I’m beginning to hate that phrase) and watch the Superbowl. She’d already been staying home with her child for the week down there, due to school closures, and I was pretty sure she needed the company (as did I). And, in her bit of snowed-insanity, she drove up in the beginning of the storm. BWAHAHAHAHAHA! By 10am on the day of the storm, my friend and I had already cleaned up my kitchen and she was cooking two varieties of soup while the kids trashed the rest of the house. According to my notes (shut up!), there was also a point where we did think it could be amusing to burn the house down… because we had nothing else to do.

So, get this:

• Richmond got a foot of snow. We got 3 feet.
• Richmond did not lose power. We were discussing which dog to eat first during the 4 hours we were without heat.
• Richmond had cable/phone/internet. My friend and The Husband went to another friend’s house to watch the Superbowl because we were without TV (except Nemo!) for 36 hours.
• Richmond probably had every Starbucks open. We may or may not even be able to find Starbucks today under all of this snow.

Yesterday, I spent hours shoveling snow, in hopes that some day, we will be able to resume our normal lives again. The Husband even shoveled, and I didn’t yell, because… well, fuck it. That was a lot of snow. I shoveled so much snow in the past two days, I’mma start calling myself, “Bobcat.” (RAWR!) I even had a fantasy about going over to the man on the corner and propositioning him for his snow blower. Yes. SNOW BLOWER. You can see where that is headed. Today, school is cancelled, as it is tomorrow. By Wednesday,when we’re hit with another paltry 5 inches of snow, I may be in Texas. Fuck this.

Below are photos of an anonymous snow-torn neighborhood, a SnowTini, and a video of an anonymous woman who has clearly been taken in by the snowed-insanity of this storm.

SOTW! Because the photo with the trees is actually looking out my front door, before I began the shovel-thon.

Tags: Friends of Melia, I love my friends, snow is the devil, snowed-insanity, today in melialand, youtube

Tags: sexuality, stolen idea from twitter, wordless wednesday

In a series of ironic adventures, I was asked to review this book for Dr. Jennifer Ashton, an Ob-Gyn in New Jersey. Ironic, because my last term in school revolved around my own writing of “postpartum” manuals for women, but in a “straight talk” sort of way that really makes my heart sing. If you’ve really been following my blog, you may have noticed that my current (and last) term is about female sexuality (and its evolution in literature and society, as defined in these sorts of books where such topics were formerly taboo, or extremely clinical). And, finally, I recently had the pleasure of discussing oral sex with my son, and I did use the line from a Dr. Oz show – that he can still catch an STI via oral sex.

Had I been paying attention to my P.O. Box and the name of the doctor on the show,  I would have fallen over from coincidence. The woman whose words really prompted me to even mention oral sex to my son was Dr. Jennifer Ashton. I am a little embarrassed to admit that I didn’t put two and two together until the publishing company reminded me, after reading my sex talk blog, that I had committed to this book review.

Now that we got that all out of the way, I really want to applaud The Body Scoop for Girls. As a teenage girl, I moved from Ohio (where sex ed was pretty clinical) to Arkansas (where sex ed was learned in the back of a pick-up truck). As I’ve mentioned, my parents were diagnosed with HIV and later passed from AIDS. During that time, nobody ever told me that I could get HIV from oral sex, and I was pretty well-educated (I thought) for a teenager. Lucky for me, oral sex was a privilege, not a right. My point is that there was a lack of sex education during my tween/teen years that is still happening today, and at the same time, it appears there is an increase in sexual activity. Abstinence-only education is not helping, obviously, and that’s why this book and this doctor is so very important.

Back in the day,  I went to a free clinic one day to get put on the pill (not because I was having sex, but because I wanted a note to skip school that day) and since I’d had sex one time (subsequently swearing off sex forever)  but hadn’t had a period for six weeks, they told me I could be pregnant. GASP. I was 16.

My friend and I bought a pregnancy test – one with cups, droppers and other paraphernalia (things are much easier today) and I somehow lost the stick before I got home to take the test. I stored the unused (and incomplete) test in an old purse that was eventually found by my mother and stepfather, prompting them to put me on the pill. Lucky for me, I wasn’t pregnant, just a late bloomer under tremendous amounts of stress. For obvious reasons, dealing with a somewhat sexually active teenage daughter was not high on my parents’ list of priorities at that time, and I was just kind of left in the dark, with a disc of birth control pills. Meh, it was just a scare. Let’s bring on the boys!

I wasn’t alone, though. Most girls I knew learned about sex from Judy Blume, from Seventeen Magazine, movies or from trial and error. Finding a book like The Body Scoop for Girls would have been an amazing resource for all of us; for my high school friend who got pregnant at 14 and had an abortion, or my other high school friend who got pregnant and dropped out of school. Clearly, there was a disconnect in our sex education. I even know some women today who could use a refresher course on their bodies, the risks of sex, etc.

Dr. Ashton’s book puts sex, body issues, nutrition and safety in a warm, caring and accessible light. It has just enough authority to mean business, and just enough humor to calm the fears of teenage girls (and their parents). The book gives information in an easy-to-read manner. It doesn’t sugar coat the truth, but it gives the reader a chance to make her own decisions over her own body, and gives insight into what a phenomenal doctor-patient relationship should be.

I love this book, and as strange as it sounds, I agree with Dr. Oz who is quoted on the cover of The Body Scoop for Girls as saying, “I trust her with my daughters.” (Granted, my daughters are only four right now, but I like to plan ahead.) If you’re squicky about sex, then use this book as a buffer, as a way to talk to your daughter. If you’re confused about what is going on in her life, read the book. Remember what its like to be a teenage girl, and be the parent you always wish you had.The book is great, the message is fabulous, and there is no better time than today to encourage yourself, or a teenage girl, to take control of her body, her mind and her sexuality.

Tags: empower your self, knowledge is power, melia talks about sex, sex, teenager scare the living shit out of me

On Saturday, I woke up very, very sore, like I had somehow done aerobics (because that happens in my world) or a couple of hours of ATS drills. My legs hurt in ways that are totally not explainable by random acts of belly dance, yoga or anything else that is usually the culprit in my world. I was sore in a way that was almost concerning, but then I fell back on the bed in a puddle of giggles because I remembered what I’d done: I danced in public. For hours.

Flashback about 15 years ago, when I used to hit clubs every weekend with my BFF and dance my ass off. Back then, I was the weird girl who didn’t want to ass-dance with guys. I was just in it for the music. That pretty much hasn’t changed, except…

Somehow, on Friday night, as a few friends and I went to see a local cover band, I jumped into an early-80’s-style dance off with a 40-something year old albino man. He probably wasn’t albino, but just very blond, however he was dancing up a storm and I think I may have knocked a person or two out of my way just to dance with him. I was fierce, and I remember thinking that there was no way I was going to NOT dance with him.

I have since reconstructed that scene in my head into some version of the Footloose dance (including subtitles, yo. ).The guy in blue at 2:22 is probably the closest to what I may have managed to do for three minutes, and I cannot remember the song for the life of me, so Footloose it is. (Scratch that one off my bucket list.) My drinky friend, Martini Lady, said my dancing was really good. She also said, drinky out of the blue, I had a really good nose for piercing. I may love her. The guy disappeared once the song ended, never to be seen again. Bwahahahahaa!

That was Friday. The rest of the weekend was pretty blah, mostly because of the half foot of snow that was dumped from the sky, increasing my cabin fever to extraordinary heights, even if I’d just been out all night.

So, the signs of spring are appearing: I have begun to plan my next road trips (I think I’m going to Boston!)… oh, and Magic Hat’s spring beer is out. And, its good, and sold only at Target. Ironic.

SOTW!

That’s like the cheesiest song, ever. But, I’m expanding my horizons.

Much better. In a country sort of way.

Tags: belly dance, blue moon beer is the devil, dance like nobody is watching, youtube

I don’t know, it was something about the subtle endorsement of Lady Gaga by the almighty Elton John (I cried, because I AM that dorktastic) that has sucked me into the Grammy’s.

So, here’s my “live-as-it-happens-even-if-you-only-read-about-it-tomorrow” commentary.

• Steven Colberrrrrr. He’s just part of the group sex I’ll one day have with Jon Stewart and Q. Or not. But he’s awesome.
• J-Lo. Wow, uh, didn’t see that one coming. And announcing Green Day? Weird.
• Best Green Day tweet: this is like watching Glee do Green Day. Yeah, totally. Boo.
• Country. Meh. Ok, I’m secretly rooting for Taylor. Shh.
• Beyonce. I totally respect her, particularly when she grabs her crotch. No, even more so when she covers Alanis. Fuck yeah.
• P!nk. Fucking shit. Best song ever. Awesome, awesome, awesome. and the spinning, and singing, and upside-down-ness.
• Um, things are blurry right now. P!nk overload.
• BEP -- I think I was spoiled by my ATS teacher’s performance. Although, that, too, would have rocked with robots, come to think of it.
• Antebellum. If they weren’t country, they’d be pop.
• Colberrrrrr! Awwwww yeah! (Not that I actually heard the album, but whatever).
• KOL! (Totally distracted by explaining to The Husband and Talker that if P!nk comes into the area, my world will stop and not start again until after I recuperate from her show)
• Jamie Foxx… yo. You were just announced by Robert Downey, Jr., and his horribly offset glasses. And, your ass was totally saved by Slash. And Jay-Z. But, mostly Slash, because he is, yes, awesome. I only managed to keep my clothes on because Talker is watching with me.
• I just, I don’t know, “21 Guns” wasn’t all that. Sorry.
• If you can get Leon Russell to play with you, you’re set, whoever you are, Zac Brown Band. (I’m sure you’ll be in my playlist soon, fear not).
• Today was a fairy tale because… Stevie Nicks. You are a lucky, lucky girl, Taylor. This is like your American Idol moment. Try to stay on key.
• Stevie, no! Don’t do it! NOOOOOO! Now I have to have find this duet for my iPod. Fuck.
• I’m going to start a line of designer 3-D glasses.
• I can only hope that Bon Jovi sings the Lego Rock Band song that Talker makes me sing. Uhhhh…. Blaze of Glory? I don’t think its on the ballot, though.
• Placido Domingo and Mos Def. Awesome. Rhianna… totally digging the Flock of Seagulls look.
• MARY. J. BLIGE. and that other guy I should know but I’m blinded by MJB.
• Dave Matthews shouldn’t dance. And why is someone from Glee even near the Grammy’s? I thought there were restraining orders in effect.

Then it all slowed down, and I went to bed. Congrats to Taylor, mostly for avoiding another Kanye incident.

Lady Gaga and Elton John:

And, then, my dearest love, singing my favorite song ever.

Tags: I cannot believe I got caught up in the Grammy Awards, music, youtube