Friday, July 31, 2009

Don't bother relaxing, it doesn't help

Being a headmistress, I have had my share of dealing with children. I know all too well the sour smell they exude after an hour of playing soccer. I know that they defy social norms of personal space and breathe heavily and open-mouthed through oversized teeth that they must be bribed to maintain clean. I know that they favor objects of school property for their snot to take residence as opposed to neatly folded tissues. I know they are rowdy, misbehaved, unmanageable and in need of severe correction-- for the most part.

Despite this, I want children of my own.

But you see, like today's reviewee, I find myself dangling above the inaccessible jungle of parenthood, hung from the blasted trees by the tangled parachute of delayed fecundity with no one to rescue me yet. Meanwhile, the storks that fly overhead drop nothing but liquefied disappointment on my shoulders, while carrying bundled happiness off to other people who have landed safely and quickly on jungle grounds.

I have been dangling in frustration for a fraction of four years Womb4improvement has spent shagging ineffectively and soiling in vain any indicator sticks that dare cross her pee stream. But already I want to shove a protractor up someone's ass, particularly my pain-loving sperm donor/school custodian in the dark confines of broom closet shame. Every time a new menstrual cycle begins, I deliver him a hefty whipping of probably unsubstantiated worry and tears, lamenting that we are officially one of those childless couples that has anthropomorphized their cat into a hairy baby. I then oblige him to partake in yet another month of coldly-timed vanilla humping, where I have to beat his buttocks with a metal-beveled ruler to keep him from instinctively directing the essential gravy of his manhood onto the darndest of places above my waist. This previously standard practice is no longer permitted in the repertoire of baby-makin' broom closet bangin'.

For these reasons, I had a biased interest in today's reviewee from the moment I read the URL, and more sympathetic to her unsuccessful spawning, I could not be.

Were it not for this kindred interest, though, I might not have been so readily captured.

First of all, her template looks like a doodled-on desk that some 4th grader threw up his radioactive split pea soup on in art class. Despite the slime-green color, which I will leave to a matter of personal taste, knowing that a whopping 2% of the population actually likes it, our reviewee really has kept her desk acceptably neat, obviously having done some homework. She gets two glittery smiley-faced stickers for that; one for each heretofore unchapped nipple.

Moving on. Womb4improvement, we have editing issues, my child.

The first paragraph of your About Me page alone made me want to will my hand through the computer screen with all of the capacity of my pedagogical wrath and throttle you back to the third grade where you should have learned proper sentence formation. Your entire blog is riddled with post after post of sanity-hijacking errors, and an odd hatred of commas. Seriously, your husband has better punctuation when he sends text messages.

Before you hit publish, please do the following, so you don't send an educator like myself to another totalizing institution:

1). Read your post while asking yourself if your sentences (every one of them) flows properly. Ask yourself if you have denied any commas a right to life or have forgotten any connecting words like "and" whose absence will make your readers want to poke their eyes out with a geometry compass.

2). Edit.

3). Read your post again, noting that there are still an assload of mistakes you didn't catch the first time.

4). Edit the shit out of that still-mangled bastard.

5). Step away from your computer and partake in non-vanilla sex with the husband, even if you are not ovulating.

6). With a clear mind, read the post again, making any minor corrections that may still be needed.

As to your About Me page, the level of boring oozing off of it that your average visitor will be affected by narcoleptically is more toxic than the unmanaged asbestos in the school cafeteria, unless there is some off-chance that the visitor is also desperately TTC*. While occasionally you fall into the temptation of lazy, factual list-making and reporting inane details when you are clearly capable of narrative, your About Me page should reflect the best of what you can do, not the worst. Womb4improvement, please, for the love of a healthy womb lining, get rid of that monstrosity of a timeline and post it on a new page linking to it from your home page for all the TTCers who might give a crap about the mundanity of your torment. Then rewrite your About Me page generally indicating how long you've been humping in desperation and peeing on random pieces of plastic and include all of the heart and soul and pain and frustration and desperation and humor in the face of difficulties and love and gratitude and hope and strength that is found throughout your blog.

You've shown me your desperate moments, your relationship with the husband, how troubled you are by your own envy, how hopeful you can be, how hard it is to go through this without your mother, how imaginative you are and what a truly enviable attitude you have towards life even when things aren't going your way. Throughout your blog, your lovely subtle humor has made me want to dry hump your leg (which would apparently be as effective in terms of conceiving a child as what I'm doing now). You have reeled me in with a unique voice and story.

So for now I can give you these in the hopes that you will improve your editing and knock it off with the factual reports and lists and boring details, and will start exploiting your storytelling ability.



If you do so, you can count on the fact that I will read your blog far into mommyblogdom.

And now I pass you over to the alumni association to either haze or praise you.

16 comments:

  1. Oh what a wonderful review.

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  2. Is Madame Bellicose going to be a regular reviewer? Oh please, please let her be a regular reviewer. I enjoyed this entry a great deal. Well written, humorous and incredibly entertaining. Oh wait, was there a reviewee in there somewhere? I got distracted by the great review writing. Going back to re-read now.

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  3. Well this was just...fucking good, is what it was. But as for Womb...I just cannot relate.

    I can't relate to blogs all about trying to make babies, because I'm trying as hard as I can to not have one.

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  4. Great review! And an interesting blog. Maybe not quite my cuppa, but interesting.

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  5. Thank you for such a brilliant and thoughtful review (I'm focusing on the dry-humpage and tinsel-tits bits).

    That whole proof-reading rant echoed perfectly my English teacher's ongoing despair at my inability to master commas ... actually looking at your pic ... Mrs Reynolds?

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  6. I'm with Rassles. I spent my whole youngish life not wanting babies, decided not to have babies and had myself fixed. We brought the dog in at the same time. We got a twofer.

    I've not been to Womb's site yet, but the title makes me chuckle and she has responded to the review with grace. For that I like her.

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  7. Miss Missives8/03/2009 4:48 PM

    I got a womb for rent over here, Miss Missives could use a new pair of boots dammit. Nice review and spot on as far as the atagirls and ohnoyoudints.

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  8. Wow...awesome review. I hope Bellicose sticks around for more.

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  9. At the risk of having sharp objects hurled in my general direction, I have to be a voice of dissention about this review. Madame Bellicose, if you're one of my bloggy pals in disguise, I hope you won't erase me from your reader and delete me from your blog roll...but while you were chastising Womb about editing, the same thoughts were going through my mind about the review. I just wanted to get to it quicker. I just couldn't get through it on the first read and had to come back later.

    Obviously I'm in the minority here...so please revel in the kind words from the AAYSR alumni association.

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  10. womb4improvement - thanks for taking it so well. I really did enjoy reading your blog and will continue to do so.

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  11. I hate nicey nicey reviews.

    Where is LB?

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  12. I LOVE WFI. And not just because I can relate to what shes going through.

    Ps...I'm loving this new reviewer as well.

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  13. Madame, I have SUCH a crush on you. Nicely reviewed.

    I'm with Rass. I still can't quite get my head around the whole trying to conceive thing. For me it's still trying NOT to.

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  14. WFI is witty, clever witty, like when Stephen Fry makes references to synonyms you never heard of witty.

    Better than a two in my tattered book.

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  15. Your tattered book sounds good to me, X. Or something...

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Grow a pair.