Go figure

A number of years ago, when I lived with Maude, I had this dream that she slept with the husband of a friend of mine.

I woke up feeling just terrible about it, because why would she do that?

I told my friend very apologetically. She wasn't the least bit bothered. Because, you know, it was a dream.

Maude, however, was really annoyed with me, because he was someone she wasn't remotely attracted to, and not someone she would ever sleep with. How could I do that to her?

So the other night, I dreamt that I was visiting friends of mine - a married couple - and while the wife was cooking dinner she said, "OK, you can go ahead and do it now."

I was supposed to have sex with her husband.

And it wasn't really something I wanted to do, but it also wasn't going to take a great deal of effort, so I went ahead and did it.

To be polite, really.

Let me assure you that while I might feel someone's boobs to be polite, that's about the extent of my manners.

But anyway, I woke up all what kind of weird dream was that? So I told Nick about it. He wasn't overly delighted. As one might not be.

So I thought I'd make him feel better. "You know, if I were going to cheat on you, he's definitely not one of the men I'd do it with."

He just looked at me.

"Which doesn't mean that I've thought about it. It's not like there's this list of...There's not! It's more, well, he wouldn't be on it."

This reassurance, oddly enough, didn't turn things right around.

Blame it on the rain that was falling falling...

Have I told you that I take inclement weather extremely personally?

I do.

Also, today, I hate everything. The craptacular weather is like the freezy grey icing on the hate-cake that is me today. Grr! Hatey hate! Stabbity stab!

And I hate being this grumpy. Any suggestions for getting out of a grump?

Back to the weather, though. Somehow, it is all about me. And this winter, this eternal-endlessly-eternal-suckass-cold-grim-even-though-it's-officially-spring winter, has lasted MY ENTIRE LIFE.

I don't do this with nice weather. (Does one ever say clement weather? I never hear it. Only inclement.) But once it's bad weather, well, it's been visited directly upon me. Smote, I tell you, smote by the rain!

Devious droplets of dickishness.

This morning as I walked to work, the weather broke my umbrella. The wind was coming from 37 different directions and kept turning my cute red umbrella with admittedly oddly-yellow-tinted zebras inside out and now it is broken.

I felt like my two-mile walk to the office was this Sisyphean task, and I wanted to shake my fist at the gods. Instead I just glowered and stomped along, trying to avoid the other pedestrians who were also being buffeted about, trying to salvage their umbrellas.

(Which gave me the suspicion that it is not directed specifically at me. That was short-lived, though.)

And I hate wind. I am not one of those, oh, gentle breezes softly caressing my cheek! oh, for the wind in the willows! kind of people.

No. For me it is more like when we were kids and my brother and I were in the back seat of the car and there would be a Very Firm Line down the middle. And he would keep crossing it and touching me.

And I would be all, "Stop touching me! Daaaaaad! Sibling is crossing the line and touching me! Stoooooop! Touching! Me!"

I dislike the feeling on my skin. I don't even particularly like house fans. Which is unfortunate because they seem to be one of Nick's passions in life. Also the sailing. There is necessarily a lot of wind involved.

But that is a whole nother topic.

Anyway, there was the wind. And the rain. Also coming from multiple directions. And the coldy cold!

Will it ever get warm? When was the last time it was warm? I seriously cannot remember being warm.

Well, except yesterday. Yesterday was actually quite lovely.

I suppose Monday's as good a day as any to talk about nipples

I had this brief thought of, "Hmm, maybe a nipple post isn't really appropriate on a Monday." But then I was all, "Seriously? Because nipples are more of a Thursday thing?"

I don't know.

So. One of my colleagues recently returned from maternity leave.

Actually, I should stop here with a warning: if you're a woman who has never breastfed, but is considering it, you might want to skip this post. In fact, if you're anyone who is particularly fond of nipples, same goes.

So the colleague came back to work, and on her first day back, another colleague and I ran into her on her way to the new lactation room to pump.

Prior to that you could do it in our small library. You had to wait until nobody was in there and then lock the door. I never put a sign up, because I wasn't sure what to say. (Pumping? Office motherhood in action? This fucking sucks?)

The library, however, was a much better situation than several years prior, where I've been told you had to hook your boobs up in the bathroom and kind of hover near the sink, since that's where the plug was. Also, the library has Internet.

And if you have ever pumped (or expressed, if you prefer) milk, you know that it super sucks.

Hahaha! Punny!

Except that it does. It really really does. It's dreadful all around.

If you've never done this and you're still reading, let me tell you. You put these clear plastic things that look sort of like funnels on your boobs, and they're hooked by tubes to a machine that provides suction.

So you can watch in horror as your nipple is stretched an inconceivable distance away from your torso. Seriously. You would never imagine that your boob could be so squozen or that it would stretch so far.

Unless, of course, you've had a mammogram or are one of those women in rural Africa who roll up their boobs.

With the pumping, you also get to see how much comes out with ever squeeze. And you get more if you're relaxed. So sitting there going, "I have a meeting in half an hour and my boobs are so full and godfuckingdammit WHY isn't any milk coming out?" does not help.

No. What you need to do is sit there and take deep breaths and be all serene. You could see, through the clear plastic, the direct correlation between your level of relaxation and your production.

I kind of expected my success rate to go up when I looked at shoes or celebrity gossip online, but it didn't. Reading blogs was variable, depending on the topic. Reading work email shot it all to hell.

So mostly I'd sit there all deep breathing and mantra-ing about milk production and serenity and la la la.

But what I am getting to is this. And this is the bad part.

We wound up talking about the horror of looking down while pumping. And how you just cannot believe this is happening to these very important pieces of your body.

"The worst part, though," I said, "is that they never go back to the way they were before."

Her eyes widened. "Never?"

I shook my head in lamentation. I looked at another colleague, also a mother.

She shook her head slowly and sadly. "Nope."

It's tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme that's right on time

If you regularly read LG and you stopped by yesterday and went through the loop, you may have thought any of the following:

• When will I actually get to the information?
• Tricked! Assholes!
• Tricked! What a fabulous April Fools gag!
• What the fuck is Lisa doing in the same chain as all these serious bloggers?

Right.

Sometimes you're just traipsing along in life, writing about motherhood and shoes and poo, and then your friend Mark from high school in India invites you along and you wind up doing something totally fun and random and completely outside your norm.

But you know, first thing I looked at the other blogs - primarily lawyers and doctors - and said to Nick, "They're all so...grown up! They write about real things! Their readers are going to wonder what the hell I'm doing in there."

I felt kind of like I do when I attend meetings with people in the financial world in New York.

I put on a nice suit and a fabulous scarf and lipstick and my serious glasses. But inside I'm 12 and will giggle if anyone farts, and I like to talk about things like where I would put my penis if I had one and would much rather think about spring shopping than liquidity swaps and risk and emerging markets.

Nick tsked me and said, "Look, they just write about more formal topics. Relax."

If you want the details of the plot and execution, Eric Turkewitz - the mastermind behind it - has the details.

No, really. He does. No (April) foolin'.

Happy Saturday, all!

Oh, hi April!

So you know I am not a lawyer and I do not live in the law blog world, and really, the closest I've gotten to being a lawyer is, uh...

Actually I don't tend to talk about that kind of thing on LG.

Suffice it to say that I went on approximately 37 kabillion dates with lawyers and then wound up marrying one. And almost all my friends are lawyers of one sort or another. Including Mark, of the oh-so-astute Rules for Crazy.

And he is usually how I wind up with random lawyer tidbits, some of which are just delightful.

Last year, a friend of Mark's posted about being hired as the first White House law blogger - an April Fool's joke that wound up making the New York Times. In fact, they got fooled twice that day.

Which pissed them off, because, you know, they're the New York Times.

The only human I know who doesn't respect the NYT is my mother-in-law, who thinks they're a bunch of loser liberal propagandists.

Anyway. In my world, and many other people's, the New York Times is a venerable institution and a credible news source.

Which, of course, is why it's kind of awesome to have April fooled them, no? And kind of astounding and bizarre that it happened again this year.

I'm wondering if they're all, "There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — You can't get fooled again."