My mother, having listened to more than her fair share of my complaints about the inability of VH and the Big-Eyed Boy to keep their pee where their pee belongs, sent me an email today about the Amsterdam airport’s unique solution to that very problem.

Supposedly, they’ve etched a fly into every urinal knowing that men are likely to aim at the thing, and thus prevent pissing off employees who are tired of cleaning the walls, floors and just about every other surface in the bathroom.

Naturally, I was skeptical but it turns out this story is anything but new. Apparently it’s been floating around (pardon the pun) for over a decade now.

“So what do you think most men do? That’s right, they aim at the fly when they urinate. They don’t even think about it, and they don’t need to read a user’s manual; it’s just an instinctive reaction. The interesting feature of these urinals is that they’re deliberately designed to take advantage of this inherent human male tendency.”

According to one website, research has shown 80% less splattering with fly-etched urinals than without… which seems to imply that boredom might itself be the primary cause of men pissing all over the dang place… something I just don’t get.

Then again, I can’t say I’ve ever been bored while standing around with a penis in my hand, so perhaps it’s not my place to question this phenomenon.

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Some men buy their wives jewelry. Others give their sweeties perfume, flowers or chocolate.

VH gave me my very own “phase line”. Or, more accurately, he named one after me (which no doubt has had this year’s CGSC students scratching their heads).

World, may I present Phase Line Kate:
.

He totally gets me, doesn’t he?

A couple of years ago, I wished for a way to use my laptop while riding my exercise bike. Despite several configurations, not a darned one has worked, which means that in those two years I’ve probably ridden less than a dozen miles on the thing.

Oh, it’s not for lack of thinking about it. Ostensibly, my daily plan to exercise is why my daily “uniform” consists of snake-print trimmed sweat pants and rainbow of athletic shoes. But the reality is that, although dressed to exercise, I seldom make time to actually do it.

Because that would involve stepping away from the computer, you see.

Then a while back I read over at Lifehacker about a man who has rigged his computer so he can type while walking on his treadmill. He’s burning 600+ calories a day doing what he’d been doing for years: working online. He’s just added physical activity to it.

That’s like the Holy Grail of blogging, if you ask me.

See, ever since I started blogging, my butt has grown along with my blog’s traffic. Now, I’m not about to start fat blogging Calacanis-style (I share enough of that info over at Chubby Mommy, but the fact that the Adidas shoes I bought five years ago still look brand new should tell you how little activity I get in the average day.

So earlier this week, I bit the bullet: I bought a treadmill and asked VH to build a shelf that holds my laptop in place. (There’s room for a coffee mug with a no-skid base, too.)

This morning’s my first effort at it, which is why I’m up and blogging even though it’s Saturday. Ever since the treadmill arrived I’ve felt like a kid on Christmas morning, all giddy and excited that I might just get what I’ve been hoping for: a way to work back down to my pre-blogging physique without the stress of finding time to do it.

So far, I haven’t noticed any additional typos, although two things have become clear. First, there’s a reason discount shoes are inexpensive: they save money by leaving out all forms of arch support, padding and traction. Second, 5 mph is a lot faster than it sounds. I realized that about the third time the machine sent me flying into the wall, and now I’ve got it set at a modest 2 mph (which is also a lot faster than it sounds).

No, it’s probably not as fun as that Wii I’d been saving up for, but at least I don’t have to arm-wrestle my 8-year-old to be able to use it. With how out of shape I’ve become since blogging, my kid would probably win, anyway.

I’d said that I didn’t much like Sims 2, and hadn’t really missed it since my daughter “misplaced” the CD. Then last week, my friend Margi convinced me to give it another try.

My, what a difference a couple of years makes.

To top it off, I found an auction listing all of of Sims 2 expansion packs in one lot and won. The UPS dude just dropped them off.

So I’m going to be a bit busy for, oh, the next fourteen hours or so. Talk amongst yourselves.

After 10 years of marriage, I am starting to realize that a woman’s wedding ring must be awfully darned heavy — how else to account for the 40+ pounds she gains after the “I Do’s” are done?

A man’s ring? Well, it’s a medical freakin’ marvel, baby, because a man’s ring has the ability to redirect blood flow. All that energy a man used to put into pretending he was listening — while actually counting down the minutes until he could step up from intellectual foreplay to full-frontal frolicking — gets redirected before the “oooooh” part of “I Do” settles into the church carpet.

That moment which represents the culmination of every little girl’s fantasy — when she’s standing at the altar in a dress she’ll wear for 3 hours that costs more than all of the dresses she’s previously worn in her life combined and all eyes are upon her… that moment, in the man-scheme of things, is infinitesimally small and yet infinitely more profound.

Oh, sure, her life and maybe her last name are going to change. Eventually - eventually - she’ll probably begin to pack on the pounds, either before pregnancy or afterwards when she realizes that, if she could do it all over again, the money that went towards her dress should’ve been saved to pay for that post-marital lipo.

But meanwhile, in the blink of a blink of an eye, her man’s entire physiology changed. As she looked up toward him, her eyes fervently shining with pride over how much her real-life “I Do” sounded like the ones she’d rehearsed umpteen times into her pillow — her man’s blood flow got shunted from the part of his brain that used to pretend to listen to a part that actually enables him not to listen ever, ever again.

How else to explain why men who possessed perfect urinary aim when they were mere boyfriends suddenly become, upon marriage, Picassos of the piss hole? Or why the man who used to feign the need to fill up his gas tank so he’d have an excuse to go take a crap at the gas station turns — thanks to his wedding ring — into a man who not only leaves the door open and the fan off when he’s letting the toilet know who’s boss?

And a woman can complain about it until she’s blue in the face — so long as she doesn’t cut off the vaginal or mammary life-support system — but he’ll never hear one bitchified word.

So what’s a girl to do?

Sure, she could lose that 40 pounds and see if that doesn’t make a man listen. But let’s face it, a woman can lose at least 150 pounds in a heartbeat: she just has to file for divorce.

Short of that? Well, she learns to cope. As I have.

And now — because I have nothing better to do with my evenings, apparently — I’m sharing the skills. For my female readers, and my venomously anti-vaginarian bachelor friends, I’ve started a weekly newsletter featuring new recipes; planned weekly dinner menus with a shopping list; house cleaning tips; and more.

The first issue goes out tomorrow. Better sign up while you can. But even if you miss popping my newsletter’s cherry you can always visit me at I Think, Therefore I Blog and sign up for it in the sidebar.

Come to think of it, maybe you should just be visiting me there at ITTIB a bit more often period. Or did that wedding ring on your finger ruin your ability to think, too?

I’ve been Spring Cleaning the house this week, albeit cleaning a little less furiously than in previous years. Still, we’re talking bursts of deep house-cleaning amid bouts of homeschooling and entire evenings spent nodding off over dinner before collapsing on the sofa.

This, because I decided to save a buck and fire our weekly maid service.

Oh, sure, I’ve got a nifty multi-head extension cleaning kit to reach cobwebs and dust ceiling fans with ease, and my Dyson Animal vacuum cleaner is amazing.

The problem is that they require effort on my part, and after days of decluttering closets (and, no, I haven’t listed anything for auction yet), I’m worn out.

But I didn’t let that stop me last night. Oh, no. Having already felt the first tickles of springtime allergies in my nose I decided it was time to give the carpets a good steam cleaning. Rather than hire professional, trained carpet cleaners I got the bright idea to do it myself with my Bissell cleaner and a homemade carpet shampoo using vinegar.

Which, incidentally, is why I have time to blog this afternoon.

One of these days I’m going to learn that a 40-year-old, out of shape woman has no business trying to clean a 3-story house all by herself. One of these days, VH is going to learn that, too.

See, I actually finished my Spring Cleaning labors before my back seized up and landed me in on the sofa, his work has just begun. That’s right: I’ve got a martini shaker, a little bell and a bottle of aspirin, and I’m not afraid to use them.

If you ask me, that’s how the Biblical creation story really ought to go. I am, as I’ve mentioned before, addicted to TaB soda. Back when we lived in Hawaii, I had to have TaB shipped to me and made everyone who visited bring it with them.

VH secretly suspects that the reason I insisted on moving back to Kansas was so I could have an unfettered supply of the stuff, and he’s not entirely wrong. Unfortunately, thanks to a bonehead taking over the Commissary at Ft. Leavenworth, my supply ran out.

Until today.

Today, my friend Kim sent me TaB. Four 12-packs of it, as a matter of fact. That’s forty-eight little pink cans full of heaven, all (but one) of them now safely locked away in my desk.

I’m so happy I could pee.

Back in December, VH and I decided to get our eyes examined. I was 3 years overdue for a new glasses and contact prescription, and he’d reached the point where he couldn’t read the newspaper without growing longer arms. It was time, and the timing was good, too: we knew insurance might not cover all of the expense, so we wanted to get our exams done in time to deduct them on our taxes.

Fortunately — or so we thought — there was an eye doctor just down the road that not only offered exams but also sold glasses and contacts. We’d seen their building go up a year or so ago, and since then we’d driven past the sign announcing Drs. Norris & Kelly’s services almost daily.

VH went first, and being the cheap man that he is he declined all of the “optional” exam bling like baseline documentation. When it turned out that he only needed reading glasses, in a strength available at Wal-Mart, he figured he’d get them there.

I’m not so lucky: I have horrible eyesight. I had all the bling tests done and had both a contact and eyeglass exam. (Which, incidentally, I had no idea were separate things and still am not sure about.) I picked out a pair of glasses, ordered 6 months of contacts and paid for all but my eye exam.

Since I’d read our Tricare Standard insurance documents that very morning which listed among their family member benefits: “Physical examinations, including eye examinations, and immunizations.” So, I asked Dr. Norris and Dr. Kelly’s office to bill the insurance (which they said wouldn’t pay) and told them I’d pay for the exams myself if insurance didn’t cover it.

A couple of weeks ago, I got two bills from the eye doctors, Drs. Norris and Kelly, in the mail. Both are for $170, one for VH’s exam and one for mine. (Apparently my contact lens exam and base documentation — whatever that is — were included in the $462 I already paid them).

One-hundred and seventy dollars for an eye exam seems outrageously expensive to me, so I called their office thinking that perhaps they’d accidentally billed us twice.

Amanda, the woman answering the phone, said their eye exams are $86. When I asked why I’m being billed $170 for them she claimed that the $86 is for people who pay same-day, but if they have to bill insurance it’s more.

They charge my insurance company more than they charge me? Why, that sounds like fraud to me, I replied.

She justified the difference on the basis of all of the paperwork they have to fill out. (Apparently pushing “submit” on the computer is awfully hard work. Maybe I ought to set up a business in that line of work, eh??)

So, why wasn’t I told there’d be a different fee?

Umm… well… That’s right, she didn’t have a good answer.

But I do: I intend to get in touch with Tricare to find out why their fee wasn’t covered, then I intend to tell Tricare that they’re being billed almost twice what patients are being charged face-to-face for the same service.

And then, as I explained to snippy Amanda, I will never go back to eye doctors Drs. Norris and Kelley on 2301 10th Avenue in Leavenworth, Kansas (at http://drsnorrisandkelly.com/) for eye exams, glasses or contact lenses ever again.

But first I’m going to save someone else a ridiculously high charge for eye exams by hitting a “submit” button to post this.

I’m short. I’ve always been short and I always will be. Now that I’m in my 40s, I’ve had to also accept that I’m just going to get shorter… which is almost unimaginable for someone barely 5′2″.

For years I’ve had to live with the knowledge that the typical male fantasy involves women of Amazonian height… women whose legs are, let’s face it, as long as I am tall. Until my daughter grew taller than me, I had to endure the humiliation of standing on step-stools to get glasses out of my kitchen cupboards. Soon I’ll be asking my 7-year-old to fetch the flour from the top shelf for Mommy because he’s closing in on my height, too.

In other words, I’ve spent the majority of my life with my nose at most folks’ armpit level, being bumped and jostled in crowds, having to wad my coat and sit on it in movie theaters and enduring numb legs thanks to most bar stools being so high my feet can’t touch the floor. Being short has, needless to say, pissed me off quite a few times.

So it’s no surprise to me that a recent study shows short women may live longer than the rest of you.

In fact, given my fondness for sharp, shiny things, it makes perfect sense: my face is right at your chest-height and you can’t see me coming.

Remember that the next time one of you overgrown mutants feels tempted to ask “How’s the weather down there?” M’kay?

A while back, I wrote that VH and I have been thinking about hiring professionals to handle the 8mm film to DVD transfer of some of his oldest family home movies. Naturally, half of our friends have since volunteered to handle the transfer for free — or, more accurately, in exchange for a few beers. They can’t, for the life of them, understand why we aren’t eagerly accepting their offers.

The thing is that we want it done right — without fingerprints or improper projectors damaging our old films. That’s something our friends find incomprehensible; that even after the film to DVD transfer we’d still want to keep the old films. No reason — we just do.

Besides which, most of our friends are offering to run the films through their old Super8 VHS cameras… which sounds like a practical idea but photography and film experts say will lead an inferior reproduction. (Which, meanwhile, might have damaged our originals.)

So earlier today when I mentioned to one of our volunteer-friends that I’d finally finished readying the reels for a film to video transfer, he lectured me once again on spending money for a professional service when I’ve got friends ready to handle the matter for me for free.

That’s when I reminded him that a few years ago when his wife filed for divorce, I wasn’t the lawyer he turned to for help even though I probably wouldn’t have charged him more than a few martinis. It’s funny how fast things like that make people shut up.

Sorry for the accidental posting of something that was supposed to be a future entry, along with the rearranging of an entry that I’d meant to post earlier so it wouldn’t remain at the top of the page for the rest of the day.

The fact that these two hiccups occurred should tell you what kind of a Monday I’m having.

How’s yours going?

Have you caught that new show, “Moment of Truth”? I’ve watched a total of 3 minutes of it simply because I sat down to watch the evening news on Fox a few minutes too early. Even those brief moments were more than I could stomach: I turned the TV off and checked email while waiting for the news to start.

I find nothing entertaining about watching someone squirm as they’re asked embarrassing questions while a polygraph measures their truthfulness. Oh, I understand the premise well enough: they wouldn’t be going through such humiliation if they weren’t interested in making money. But, as far as I’m concerned, the only differences between that show and, say, Jerry Springer is that fists don’t fly and someone besides Jerry makes a little cash out of the whole mess.

Of the people I know who avidly watch the show, most say they feel a thrill, a sense of vindication when one of the contestants gets discovered in a lie. They talk about the woman who was asked by her ex-boyfriend whether she’d leave her husband for him, and she said that she would. But that’s not what led her to being buzzed off the show. No, her moment came when she was asked “Do you think you’re a good person?” and she answered “Yes.” Her brain, like anyone else’s would, knew it was lying.

Besides wrecking marriages, the show has also renewed discussion about the nature of lying itself: whether it’s always a bad thing, particularly when the truth itself can do so much damage sometimes. One author has capitalized on the moment to launch a new book studying lies women tell, and her belief that women make better liars than men.

Anyone surprised by that assertion?

I thought not.

Lying and fulfilling the social expectations of “femininity” seem to go hand in hand. As early as childhood, little girls learn to present a front that doesn’t necessarily reflect their true feelings: Hush, sweetie. Play with your dolls while the grownups talk, Princess. Meanwhile, as the saying goes, boys will be boys so no one really expects them to sit still while nearby adults ignore them.

By the time we are preteens we know three “truisms” about womanhood: guys like girls with big boobs, blonds have more fun, and girls with glasses never get asked to dance first. We start stuffing our training bras, begging for highlights and squinting through class if our parents won’t get us contacts.

But, really, think about those things: bras make boobs look perkier than they naturally are; highlights falsify hair color; and contacts disguise vision problems. They’re all lies, too. (Don’t even get me started on the subject of makeup and curling irons.)

We learn, too, that those lies work. People fall for them or at least pretend they aren’t being deceived. As we grow up, we also learn that lies help us avoid conflict by making others feel better about themselves and, as a result, about us, too.

We also grow angry people who don’t lie to us to make us feel better: bosses who fire us for not performing up to par on our jobs, spouses who leave because we stopped trying to capture their interest, friends who break off relationships because they’ve outgrown us. Agnes Reppelier once said, “There are few nudities so objectionable as the naked truth.”

Maybe it’s because I am a woman that I see lying as intrinsic, to some extent, to nurturing: to protecting and sheltering others until they’re ready to hear the real truth; to cosseting the feelings of those with whom we’re not intimate and, yes, even sometimes the egos of those we know better than anyone else. Maybe that’s why women lie as readily as we allegedly do, but who’s to say that’s a bad thing?

Personally, I’m a little tired of our recent obsession with the “truth”. With reality shows. With talk shows. With sordid confessions on YouTube and tell-all memoirs.

I miss the days when you couldn’t Google someone you’d just met and find out everything about them in 30 minutes or less. I miss the slow progression of getting to know someone, and how the growing closeness between two people could be measured by the unveiling of truths they’d grown willing to share.

So tell me, folks, do these pants make me look fat? It’s okay, you can be honest with me. I promise I won’t get mad.

My husband, as you may have picked up by now, is not known for researching his facts before spouting off his opinion. I’d let that bother me, but the fact is his habit only ensures that I’m right more often than not. I, you see, tend to research stuff.

So the other day, VH opined that if we had the extra cash we should consider taking out life insurance policies on various aging celebrities.

Mick Jagger, for instance, is 64 years old now — given all of his boozing and carousing in earlier years, surely he’s due to drop dead soon. (Keith Richards, on the other hand, looks as if he died long ago but has yet to realize it.) Heck, Jack Nicholson’s getting up there in years, too, and now that his salivary glands are kaput it can’t be long before the rest of him follows.

Now, although investing in life insurance for seniors sounds like it would be a rather lucrative deal, VH refused to believe that he can’t just go taking out insurance policies on strangers willy-nilly. Which meant that I had to prove it to him, and that meant that once again I was right.

Know what else it meant?

It meant that my husband — who’s forever searching for ways to get rich quick that aren’t actually scams — now wants to take out life insurance on his folks, both of whom are in their early 70s. As their son he does, after all, have an insurable interest.

Wouldn’t you know that moments after we had this discussion his mother called to inform us when they’ll be visiting next month. Note the word choice there, folks: we were told when to expect their arrival.

Suddenly, I think my husband’s idea to insure his mother’s life might just be one of the better notions he’s come up with in quite some time.

Ever since last June when my daughter turned 16 years old, she’s told anyone who’ll listen that I am the World’s Meanest Mother. You see, despite her regular begging, I put off taking her to get her driver’s license. As far as I’m concerned, a child who can’t remember to bring her laundry downstairs before it sprouts furry green mold can’t be trusted to remember things like paying attention to stop lights, speed limits and traffic laws.

Unfortunately, her father has far more faith in her memory than I do. He’s also the World’s Greatest Dad — or at least he was for the 24 hours after he took her to get her driver’s license in December. Now that he won’t buy her a car, well, he’s getting a taste of what I endured for six solid months.

The thing is, now that she is officially a teen driver there are some good solid reasons to go ahead and get her a car of her own. Those Taco Bell runs I’m fond of making late on Saturday nights would be infinitely easier if I could get my kid to do them for me. Also, I have a half-dozen boxes of things I want to donate to Goodwill, but I’ve been too lazy to take them myself. Loading them into my kid’s car would increase the likelihood of getting the crud out of my house and into someone else’s.

But it’s not all about me. Some of my motivations actually benefit others, too. See, my daughter lives with her father and step-mother over 2 hours from our house. Giving the kid a car of her own would save hours of driving each weekend if they could just point her toward the others’ house and let her schlep herself back and forth. It’d save VH hours of driving her back on Sunday afternoons, too. Generous, aren’t I?

So the other day when my daughter started begging my husband to buy a car for her, I wholly supported the notion. With one caveat: she’d have to agree to let us put in a gps tracking device so we’d know about her driving habits.

Much to my surprise, she readily agreed. Then I realized why: she doesn’t understand just how accurate GPS tracking systems are are. She has no idea that the vehicle tracking devices can pinpoint a car’s location to within 6 feet, which is why GPS car tracking has helped law enforcement solve murder cases. (See the video demonstrating a GPS vehicle tracking system’s accuracy.)

She also doesn’t understand that, in addition to real-time reporting, we can review a historical record of where she’s been, how long she stayed there, and how fast she drove between locations. All of which, when you think about it, is much like having a parent in the car with her — but without the nagging.

So even though my husband and I have not yet agreed on whether to buy her a car, we have agreed that if we do the very first thing we’ll do is install a GPS tracking key. Then we’ll sit down with my daughter and explain to her the wealth of information we’ll be able to access.

Oh, I know there are some folks who think that’s all a bit Orwellian. We prefer to think of it as helping our daughter become a more responsible driver by using the GPS system to hold her accountable for her actions. We can’t always ride along with her, but we can ensure that she knows we might as well be.

Last fall I finally broke down and replaced the cheap knife set VH and I bought shortly after we were married. In all honesty, I probably wouldn’t have bothered for another few months but I found a great deal on a Ginsu knife set at Amazon.

Yeah, I know: Ginsu knives??? Didn’t they used to run a commercial showing a chef tossing a watermelon into the air then slicing it cleanly in two? Weren’t they proud of the fact their knives could cut an aluminum can in half yet still remain sharp enough to make paper-thin tomato slices?

Yeah, those are the ones. They’re every bit as impressive as the commercials depict, too. After 9 years of using crappy ones, I’d forgotten what good, sharp knives were like. I’ve been pampering my set ever since, too: we wash them by hand and dry them immediately, and I sharpen my Santoro-style knife before each use. That sucker’s so sharp it can cut through paper.

As I discovered tonight, it can also cut through fingers. Well, not entirely through a finger, but that’s probably because my fingernail slowed it down.

So. One quick trip to the hospital and four stitches later I’ve decided we won’t be having chicken enchiladas for dinner after all, mostly because I can’t find the other half of my fingernail. But, hey, at least it’s a clean cut, right?

Ever receive an email that’s so intrusive and inappropriate that it just begs for a scathing response, so you clear your calendar, turn the phone ringer off and tell your kid that he’s welcome to play video games for the next hour while you sit down and write a reply so full of snark as to make the recipient think you could very well be the love child of Truman Capote and Oscar Wilde, were such a thing possible…

… and then you realize that you misread the original email altogether and it’s not nearly as out-of-line as you thought?

So, that’s how my day’s going. How’s yours?

Pete Geren, the Secretary of the Army is visiting Fort Leavenworth today. VH is, at some point, attending a reception and may even be meeting Mr. Geren. That possibility has been making me chuckle all day.

Why?

Well, since I’m still playing “catch up” on laundry after being so sick last week, VH was out of clean briefs. So, under his business attire he’s wearing a pair of personalized boxers I had made for him as a joke. They read: “Notice: Privates under Kate’s command.”

Yeah, I’ve got a sick sense of humor.

Antibiotics rock. Seriously, I’d begun to think I was never going to feel better again, but four days of horse-sized pills and plenty of bed rest did the trick.

Just in time to watch one of the best Super Bowl games, ever, too. Unfortunately, I was already nodding off again midway through the celebrity pre-game interviews. (Which reminds me: is it just my imagination or is the top of John Travolta’s head getting smaller every year?) Didn’t snooze for long, though: with both VH and the Big-Eyed Boy rooting for the Giants there was plenty of hollering around the Venomous Household.

Now I just need to get caught up on email, dishes, laundry, dusting, vacuuming and emptying the cat boxes. Oh, and blogging, of course!

What have you been up to in my absence?

Just when I thought I’d kicked that flu that had me down all last week, it came back and kicked me, instead. I’m staying in bed, folks. Sorry — but I’m just too worn out right now to think about doing much more than whimpering in my sleep.

After 48 hours of 102+ fever and a lung-searing cough that just won’t quit, I feel like crap warmed over. The good news is that my fever broke sometime last night and, for the most part, I’m up and functioning again.

The bad news is that I have a gazillion emails to catch up on, five blogs that haven’t been updated in days, a kid who has been so bored watching Mommy sleep that he’s actually begging to do homeschool lessons today, and a house that looks like tornado hit it.

Meanwhile, despite having slept all but perhaps four hours since Tuesday, I still feel exhausted. Must be from all of those Nyquil-induced dreams about chasing George Clooney with a roll of duct tape while Cindy Crawford asked me for makeup tips. Man, that Nyquil is good stuff.

If I figure out who’s responsible for infecting me with the flu I’m gonna kick the snot out of them. Just as soon as I rest up.