TELL ME AGAIN TO ACT MY AGE, I DOUBLE-DOG DARE YOU

ME, PONDERING THE TRUE MEANING 
of the phrase "act your age," as well as 
the many ways one could neuter a person 
without having to go to jail for it.

A certain person who is very lucky to have escaped with his testicles intact told me to act my age today. He's not the first person to say it and he probably won't be the last. In fact, I hear the phrase "act your age" a lot.

I'm not sure whether it's my youthful good looks, my fashion choices or my taste in music that bring on this unasked-for advice, but regardless, my response is always the same: "You do realize I'm 28, right?"

I'm kidding; I'll be 27 in June. What I actually say is "Come here and say that." 
It's a very effective response that usually banishes the adviser with some alacrity. People often don't back their nosiness up with the requisite cajones, I find. (No, I am not back on the weekday hooch, but thank you for suspecting it. The goal was to lose pounds, not my edge.)
But I will admit it makes me think. I mean, what the hell DOES "act your age" even mean?

Does it mean I should be wrinklier and grumpier?
Does it mean I should I take up crossword puzzles and give up body pump classes?
Or is what they're saying coming from a crueler place? Stop colouring your hair. Stop wearing trendy clothes. Stop getting your nails done. Stop wearing heels that would cripple most women half your age. Stop having fun and start worrying about your mortgage. And above all, just settle the hell down. 

I suspect it is exactly these last few items.
Because what's really going on here is a mix of jealousy, disapproval and women-hating, three things women have grappled with for as long as there've been women and men and Donald Trump.
I've never listened, indeed I listen a little bit less with every passing year. But now I've got the attitude to back it up. You think my pink feathered shoes are ridiculous? Well guess what? You have man boobs. Do I tell you to stop acting your age? You're boring? Your clothes are frumpy? You need to do something about your midsection? Or, perhaps most succinctly: Mind your own damn business? No I do not. 
But come to think of it, maybe I will. Maybe I just goddam well will. Because I let a certain someone out there get away with his testicles intact today. Tomorrow, he might not be so lucky.

EDITOR'S NOTE: *covers crotch anxiously* Er, I would just like to state for the record that it was NOT I who told her to act her age. 
MY NOTE: Oh no need to worry, editor. Everybody knows you don't have testicles.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE PERSONAL BLOGGER OF JESUS

SISTER MARY WHORRIFIED bends over her cheese tray in holy prayer. "Dear Jesus, please smite the dirty Christian who stole what was rightfully mine. Amen."

I had a religious experience last week, and if you know anything about me at all, you can probably guess it ended badly. As do most of my religious experiences. And all of my marriages. 

Without boring you with the details of how I got conned into it, let's just say I went to a Ladies' Night Church Dinner and Gift Giveaway Extravaganza and came away with a fresh appreciation for how cut-throat those Christians can be.

It all started with the prize tickets they gave out at the door. That's nice, I thought, maybe I'll score one of those knitted tea cosies the church ladies make so that the world's ugliest yarn won't feel unwanted. That'd be just my luck. (Which, in hindsight, might have been where I went wrong. Snide goeth before a fall: Proverbs 16:18.) 

There was dinner and skits and singing and then finally, the promised gift giveaway extravaganza got underway. Within minutes, I'd won a book, a box of bonbons and a tube of hand cream.
But what I really wanted was the big shiny barbecue/smoker I'd spotted amongst the giveaway loot. 
"Bless me Father for I have sinned but holy Moses wouldst I ever loveth to win that friggin barbecue," I chanted in my most virginal voice. 
And then suddenly ... praise the lord ... like the miracle of the loaves or whatever, my ticket number was called, and I rushed that stage like you've never seen a woman in six-inch stilettos rush anything. However, one hates to appear greedy (especially on one's first visit to what one has suddenly decided is going to become a regular thing), so I hesitated when I got there. "What do I do?" I asked one of the other women whose number had also been called. "Do I just pick any prize I want?" 
"Hold on a sec, honey, I'll ask Pastor Kay." (Not her real name, because holy crap, the last thing I need is the evangelicals coming after me.)
And then she turns around and she grabs the barbecue! 

I stared at her in unholy astonishment. 
"Did you just take the barbecue?" I said. 
She smiled and shrugged. "You can pick any prize you want," she said.
Lord forgive me, but I didn't want any other damn prize. I wanted to knock her down and snatch that barbecue. But then Jesus stepped in and whispered that it would look a bit sinful to start kicking good Christian women at their own ladies night, so I sullenly chose a lovely stupid cheese-serving tray and flounced back to my table.

For the rest of the evening, I tried to talk myself out of the seething resentment I was feeling, and then I went home and seethed some more. And do you think I could sleep a goddam wink that night? "Why, Jesus? WHY? WHY DID SHE TAKE MY BARBECUE RIGHT OUT FROM UNDER ME? Can't you strike her with the clap or something? You have the power ... supposedly." 
Yeah. It wasn't pretty. 

It's now been three full days and the rage still hasn't left me. Every time I look at that stupid cheese tray it courses through me like lava. I'm obviously going to have to regift the stupidthing. (Hey Liz, guess what you're getting for Christmas?) But in the end, just like pregnancy, the hours of maddening agony and communing with our Lord and Saviour yielded something wonderful: I found Jesus. And have now become his personal blogger. He actually finds me quite hilarious and, more importantly, this will give me a fantastic edge at the next Ladies' Night Dinner and Gift Giveaway Extravaganza (Monday, Jan. 6, 2014; I checked). Ha! Cheese tray, me arse! *makes sign of the cross*

EDITOR'S NOTE: I have a terrible feeling this is going to end with you being burned at the stake.
MY NOTE: That's for witches, you moron!
EDITOR'S NOTE: *hides behind wall, fist-pumps air, returns* Oh, right. How silly of me.

I TAUGHT MY KIDS TO APPRECIATE NUDITY. AND READING.

HI KIDS! I HAVE TWO SPECTACULAR ONES I'D LIKE TO SHOW YOU!  Books. I'm talking about books. What did you think I was referring to? Weirdos.

We here at Whorrified believe very strongly in the power of nudity reading. Some of my fondest childhood memories are of curling up nude on our vast, sun-dappled porch with bewitching books that transported me to another world. Of course, that was before I discovered vodka, but still. A very formative era. 

As a young mother, my mom saw to it that I was surrounded by literature. Likewise I, as a young mother, took pains to expose my girls to good books. (Particularly this one, which they adored in spite or perhaps because of the fact it gave them nightmares.) I also almost constantly ran around the house in the nude, which is why I was thrilled when my daughter, Piggly Wiggly's mom, asked for books for Christmas this year, proving she remembered the literature, not the trauma. (Either that or she's blocked it all out. I'm sure her therapist could be bribed to tell me.) 
After 11 months in the company of a creature whose life revolves around breast milk and poop, she fears she's getting baby brain. "I can feel myself getting stupider," she texted plaintively. "Can you pls lend me some of your favourite books for Christmas?" 

I didn't have too many of my favourites on hand, but I did give her Judith Hearne, Rebecca, The Number One Ladies Detective Agency and a few others. She texted me at 5:30 a.m. on Saturday to say "Holy crap, I stayed up all night reading Rebecca!" She couldn't have made me prouder if she'd texted: "I just figured out Ryan Gosling is my real dad!" 

So today I went to the mall and bought two books I've been meaning to read, with the express intention of passing them on to Piggly's mom and my other secret daughter when I'm done with them. They may or may not choose to read them in the nude (although why would anyone choose "not"?), but I have faith that they, too, will pass on the rich tradition of reading to their daughters. Aside from my proven legacy of ethereal beauty, I can't think of a better gift I could leave to my fellow man.

EDITOR'S NOTE: *sigh* Of course she neglected to mention this, so if there's anyone still reading this flammable nightmare she calls a blog, the "two spectacular things" she's referring to are: The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman and How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny. Goosebump-inducingly good reads, both of them.

AND ON THE THIRD DAY, SHE ROSE AGAIN. BARELY ...

Me, looking fabulous yet naive,
aboard the dirty red whore that 
almost killed me two days later. 

Anyone who read the post about my catastrophic moped accident in Bermuda, in which I shredded my hamstring like pulled pork, already knows I'm indisposed. If you missed that jolly vignette, you can read it here. 

For the rest of you, an update: I still feel like crap.

It's disheartening to see how slow my progress is, it's maddening to not be able to do a blessed thing, including hobble to the latrine, without howling out loud and turning the air blue with curse words.
On the plus side, I'm becoming a whiz at crutches. My leg may be withering away but my biceps are beefing up nicely. 

I'm catching up on my drinking, my reading, my movie-watching, my observing of the comings-and-goings of the neighbours, my meticulous inventory of the areas of the house (visible from a supine position on my couch) that could use cleaning. Thankfully my daughter is coming to visit on Sunday. I'll have the mop and Pine-Sol ready. She loves that.

And then this bedraggled bag lady broke into 
my house and gave me a crutches demo.

Friends and family and neighbours have been fantastic, bringing me so much food I'm starting to think they're fattening me up because they think I'm going to die and, dang it, let's at least make sure she tastes good afterwards!  "Oh come on, Marie, you can manage a few more bites of this rum cake! There's a good girl! Heheheheh."

Oh and lastly, I've been getting some! Lots, actually. Best ever, in fact. Why should a shredded hamstring stop me from enjoying that?
Sleep, I'm talking about. What did you think I was talking about?  

All right, it's obviously time for some happy pills. They don't do much for the pain but they make me find myself absolutely hilarious. Have a happy Easter, everyone. And if you must drink, don't drive a moped, because you might run over zombie Jesus, freshly risen from the dead. (It's the pills, people. I can't help myself.)

I BASICALLY PERFORM MIRACLES, YOU GUYS. ADMIT IT.

I NEVER THOUGHT I'D SEE THE DAY THAT PIGGLY WIGGLY
would eat a single scrap of food that wasn't tricked into her while we were making her look at something else. This, my friends, is a big day.

I rarely break my own self-imposed fatwah on blogging but when I do it's for damn good reason. Sean Penn dabbling in journalism and inadvertently ratting out the world's most-wanted fugitive in the process being one such reason. Piggly Wiggly being another. (I can't believe I just lumped my own granddaughter into the same dirty laundry pile as Sean Penn, but there you go. I never said I was doing this sober ... and if I did I was probably drunk.) And there, in a nutshell, is the sort of literary cornholery you're missing out on by me vowing to stay off the Internet. God, how I've missed this!
Anyway, I'm sure I had some sort of point here *peers gloomily into half-empty bottle of Bombay Sapphire* ah yes! The baby! It's been ages since I had a proper visit with her, but today I got to spend an entire day with her and I can't believe how much she's changed.

WEE PIGGLY WIGGLY LOOKING UNDERSTANDABLY THRILLED TO SEE ME
 What this picture lacks is something to indicate exactly how wee she is, but just picture an eggplant towering over her and you'll get an idea.

It's not that she's grown, exactly. She's still about the size of a large eggplant.
And it's not that she's sleeping through the night now. In fact, her mother greeted me at the door with a groan and said: "Just kill me."
"Sure!" I agreed graciously. "Wait ... is this a trick?"
"She was up all night, mom. ALL NIGHT. Just kill me."
And it's certainly not that she looks any different. At age 2 she still looks like a nine-month-old, albeit one that walks upright and screeches "OGGIE!" whenever she hears the neighbour's bitch barking. 

No, the thing that stopped me in my tracks today was that Piggly Wiggly has finally decided that maybe she does like food, after all. Or at least, she doesn't loathe it as much as she used to. 
One of my tasks today, the one I feared most, to be honest, was "feeding her lunch." Well this will be a hilarious waste of about 25 bucks worth of food, I thought grimly. Maybe I'll just flush two heads of cauliflower and a side of beef down the toilet and tell her mother it seemed like a less profligate option.
Because as some of you will remember, eating, not unlike sleeping, growing and anything by Sharon, Lois and Bram, is one of many things Piggly can't stand in the least. We ultimately learned there were some underlying medical issues, but still, it is a tough thing to watch a baby fight you tooth and nail when you're simply trying to feed her enough to keep a bird alive.  

JUST MONTHS AGO: PIGGLY AT MEALTIME, EXHIBITING THE TYPE OF UNBRIDLED LETHARGY usually reserved for hangovers.

But those days, apparently, are over. Because today, to my astonishment, the little chickadee polished off a bowl of watermelon chunks, a bowl of buttered noodles, a scrambled egg, a slice of gluten-free bread and, finally, a large piece of fried chicken. Which I was secretly hoping she'd be too full to eat because I wanted it myself. 

When her mother returned from work, I gleefully rhymed off the list in full expectation of tears of joy and a raise in my liquor allowance, and got only this: "How big was the piece of chicken?"
"Excuse me?" I replied. "Just months ago you'd be lying on the floor right now if I'd told you she ate that much!"
"I guess," her mother allowed. "But she won't eat that much tomorrow, I bet."  
"Tomorrow is tomorrow!" I retorted, which of course put an end to the conversation because, goddamit, how does one argue with that sort of brilliance, and also Piggly chose that very moment to make a gagging sound and hork up a goodly portion of what I assume from the brief disgusted glance I gave it was fried chicken.

We cut our losses then and there, and I took Piggly upstairs to cuddle her into naptime on a full tummy. That's right: she ate AND she slept. If her mother calls me tomorrow and tells me the child grew six inches overnight, I honestly don't think I'd be surprised. Miracles, man. They do happen. *attempts to make sign of the cross, pauses, frowns* Shit. I just made the sign of the pentagram, didn't I? It's been so long ...

PIGGLY'S MOM REWARDS HER ADORABLE BAIRN 
for the selfless act of eating by rubbing her tum ... wait. WAIT! She's not feeding herself, she's sticking her fingers down her throat! SHE'S PULLING A BULIMIA ON US! THE WHOLE TIME, SHE WAS FAKING IT!

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THE ONLY REASON NOBODY DIED IS BECAUSE OF THIS LIST

MY DAUGHTER LEFT ME A TWO-PAGE, DOUBLE-SIDED LIST 
of instructions on how to care for her children in her absence. I'm actually quite flattered. If it were anyone else, she'd have left six pages.

I'm deducing from the unusual surge in hits this morning that hundreds of you are either Russian bots trying to hack into Whorrified or are simply thinking, "She hasn't posted a thing since last Thursday; let's see if the lazy bitch is even still alive ..." If you're the former, tell Putin I said "он полный мудак." If you're the latter, thank you for giving a shit. (I could have died and no one would know until the smell of rotting booze alerted them.) In fact I'm fine, I've just been completely immersed in grandchildren FOR THE ENTIRE WEEKEND.

Although some of you are already familiar with Piggly Wiggly, I actually have two other, older granddaughters about whom I (almost) never write because their mother is a tigress who guards their privacy with a ferocity some might call terrifying. I've been strictly forbidden to Whorrify them in any way, which is her prerogative and I respect it completely, even if I spend my nights trying to think of ways to get around it because holy cow, are those kids photogenic. 
So you can imagine my surprise when I got papal dispensation recently to share the tiniest nugget of information. And here is how it happened:

It was my eldest daughter's anniversary last weekend. She'd planned a surprise getaway with her husband and asked me to babysit their girls. This was no small honour, as the last time they went away overnight without their children was ... um, let me think: never? Yeah. Never. I'd been booked months in advance and had been given comprehensive verbal instructions, but my daughter was taking no chances. There was also, she admitted sheepishly upon my arrival, a note. A two-page, double-sided, painstakingly detailed note explaining literally everything from what the kids should have for dinner to how to turn on the pilot light on the fireplace (with hand-drawn diagram) should it go out. (I particularly enjoyed the footnotes, such as "Billy Elliott video NOT appropriate, lots of F-words and other language.") 

"HEY GIRLS, COME WATCH THIS SCENE FROM CAPTAIN PHILLIPS! NO REASON ..."

But while some might see this as a slight, a slur, an insult to my capabilities as a babysitter, I actually found it adorable. Because I know my daughter. I know that this is classic Type A behaviour. And I know this note was as much for her benefit as it was for mine. Leaving her children for a weekend was a big deal for her; the only way she could be okay with it would be if she could parent from afar: "For breakfast, the girls really like pancakes with white chocolate chips," "Please check on the little one twice before you go to bed, sometimes she gets too hot!" You don't have to be a genius to read the motherly love between the lines there.

My daughter knew her note might seem a little over-the-top. She also knew I would "get it" while simultaneously longing to mock it on the Interwebs for the gratification of my non-paying audience, so, as a gesture of appreciation, she said: "You're dying to blog about my note, aren't you? Fine, you can blog about it — but no pictures. And no names!"

However, as a wise if somewhat slippery boss of mine once said, in fact way more than once said: "It is easier to seek forgiveness than permission." So I didn't seek full clarification on the "no pictures" fatwah and am therefore posting a small shitload of pictures here for your non-paying viewing pleasure. Meaning major parental laws were skirted here, you guys: the least you could do is click on every single ad on the page in appreciation! 

SO WHEN YOU SAID 'NO PICTURES' YOU MEANT OF THE KIDS, RIGHT? 
Because I couldn't resist taking about a dozen selfies in your marital bed. Gawwd it's luxurious!

D

IF GOD WANTED ME TO WEAR CROCS I'D BE AN ATHEIST

Tannis Toohey @tannis2e/instagram                                              @Romancipated/Instagram

There are two kinds of people in the world: sensible people, and me. People who wear Crocs, and me. People who still have an Achilles tendon, and me.
Because I found these adorable, palest pink dominatrix-gladiator stilettos (above) on sale the other day and although the last thing I need is another pair of whorrifically inappropriate shoes, I bought them. 

I keep waiting for the day when my inner normal person awakens and decides it's time for flats, but just when I thought I was maybe almost there, a friend posted this underwater foot selfie on Facebook (hashtag #vacation #wetfeet etc etc) and the virulence of my reaction confirmed to me and the Facebook world that I am nuts not ready. Ironically, I was wearing my palest pink dominatrix-gladiator stilletos at the time — and sitting down of course, because the instant one tries to take a step in these things they bite into your flesh like a school of piranhas. Yet even the howling pain exploding everywhere from the ankles down was not enough to calm my instinctive gag reflex.

My friend, perhaps sensing that I might be logged on to Facebook because after all, it was during working hours, pre-emptively urged people not to "mock the Crocs" and explained that she had never known such comfort. And for the merest fraction of a second, that sounded tempting. But then I realized, CROCS??? I'D RATHER LIMP ACROSS A FIELD OF BROKEN GLASS IN MY BARE FEET THAN WEAR CROCS! Which coincidentally is exactly what wearing these palest pink footfuckers feels like ...

EDITOR'S NOTE: You call yourself a friend? She asks you not to mock her Crocs and you write an entire post mocking her Crocs!
MY NOTE: She'll forgive me. It is simply not possible to stay angry at someone wearing cute shoes.

RELATED: And speaking of friends, don't think I've forgotten that time you tried to steal my red-hot hooker shoes.