What about boys?

The New York Times reports on "purity balls" today—those father/daughter dances in which dads promise to protect their daughters' "virtue" and the teen girls “promise to God and myself and my family that I will stay pure in my thoughts and actions until I marry.”

It's such a crock. Where are the mother/son purity balls? Oh, right. Boys will be boys, but girls need to be kept on a tight leash lest they become damaged goods, sullied flesh that isn't suitable property to be handed over from father to husband. Really, could this entire concept be any creepier than it is? Look at the psychosocial ramifications: Girls are promising to let their dads keep their virginity in a lockbox so Dad can "give" a tight piece of ass to another man. It's just gross.

If the patriarchal nutjobs who endorse purity balls at least expected the same from girls and boys alike, I might buy their cover story, that it's about saving yourselves for a beautiful marriage blessed by the lord, yadda yadda. But when the movement is centered so strongly among girls and their fathers, the fact that it's about controlling female sexuality is laid bare. There's absolutely nothing wrong with celibate teenagers, but the fetishization of female virginity just gets re-e-eally creepy when Daddy gets involved.

What do you think?

I am the undisputed heavyweight champion of the procrastination world

My blogging to-do list:

• Flea and I went to the Police concert last weekend; reflections, ruminations, and a pictorial comparison of the mini-flower pots her son and my son gave us for Mother's Day. The contents of the pots are, quite frankly, the best part.
  
• Pictures from spring break and whatnot. I pull out my phone and take pictures of things that amuse me, but then the pictures seldom make it to the blog I intended them for.
• My fear and loathing of the busyness of this time of year. Weddings, graduations, birthdays, family gatherings, and all the truly wonderful crap that fills our calendars and deprives us of our lazy time. I love weekends with no plans. I stay in my pajamas all day. I go to bed in the same pajamas I've had on all day. Eventually, I motivate myself to shower and maybe put on some real pants...but don't go anywhere. It's not that I'm a total homebody—honest, I'm not—but I love a good lazy weekend. 
• Therapy. Did I tell you I started seeing a therapist in March? Wow, is it indulgent! I go and talk about whatever, and she listens attentively. And I'm not supposed to say, "Enough about me. How have things been going for you?" Therapy rocks. Plus she dispenses the occasional helpful suggestion that smooths out some rough spots at home. For instance: Ben + homework = trauma and frustration all around much of the time. Now we're on a new plan of "finish your homework by 4:30 and you get to play video games from 4:30 to 5." This is working like gangbusters. Ben's usually done with his work on time, and he's not lollygagging his way through it or fighting about it. He gets down to business because there's a reward. Say what you will about incentives and children's behavior—it works, and it's far more enjoyable than the daily knock-down, drag-out disputes Ben and I had been having...for a year and a half.
  

While I continue my busy, busy schedule of procrastinating, tell me: What have you been meaning to do, but you just haven't found the time?

Unprecedented development!

I got a Mother's Day card from my mother-in-law yesterday, one of the rare "to my daughter-in-law" cards. This spurred Mr. Tangerine to exclaim that he needed to send his mom a card.

I think that for nearly all of the past 17 years, I have been buying and mailing the Mother's Day cards we have sent to his mother (and mine). Today, he called me from work to ask for his folks' new mailing address because he wanted to get that card out in today's mail.

Omigod! Is it the apocalypse? I think it's the apocalypse. The swine have taken wing, and the devil is refereeing snowball fights.

Socks update: I sorted out an embarrassingly outsized heap of clothing in my bedroom. I just knew that many of the missing socks were lurking within the pile, and it would feel so good to be able to mate (heh) some socks and throw away the remaining confirmed-bachelor socks. Wouldn't you know it? I found four socks in the pile. All white, and not one a match for the lonely socks. So now I have more desolate socks than ever before.

My most important poll ever!

I need to know, dammit. I need your advice. I don't know what to do. I'm lost.

I have a laundry basket that never gets emptied out, even though the contents are always clean. There are some socks going stag in the basket. A lot of socks. Approximately seven black socks, six tan socks, seven white socks, and a couple miscellaneous stragglers of other hues. Some are mine, some are Mr. Tangerine's, and some belong to Ben.

None of these socks have mates! But surely, I tell myself, they'll surface some day. They must be in the house somewhere. Probably just got nudged under a stack somewhere.

If I throw these ones away, you just know their mates will return to them, full of apologies for being gone so long, eager to make amends, desiring nothing more than riding into the sunset together whilst embracing my family's feet.

What to do?

Your drag self

Hey, did your parent(s) ever tell you what you'd have been named if you'd been born with a different chromosomal package? I would have been named Anthony, which makes little sense. It's not a family name. Perhaps my mother had a thing for Anthony Hopkins or Anthony Perkins (Norman Bates!) in the '60s?

Ben might've been a Julia Rose. We had plenty of girl names we liked, but hadn't settled on a boy name before he was born. In fact, for his first three days of life, we called him something else—the name that became his middle name. (The bonus of having a baby in the NICU is that you can shoo away the birth-certificate-filler-outer person for days on end, and need not worry that you'll leave the hospital before naming the kid.)

A lot of parents do settle on both boy and girl names for a baby, particularly if they don't know the baby's sex in advance. What might you have been named if you'd been born with a different set of gonads?

Guess whose crossword was accepted by the NYT?

I just got the good news that Will Shortz has accepted a Sunday crossword co-constructed by my friend Tony and me. It will likely be many months before the New York Times Magazine runs this crossword, but: Wahoo!

It's that time of year: Heartfelt donation request time

But first, it's information time. Information about ovarian cancer. The wife of an acquaintance of mine, a woman I met briefly last year, died of ovarian cancer a week ago. Her name was Michele.

The disease was fairly advanced by the time it was diagnosed. For a year before diagnosis, her doctors said it was just irritable bowel syndrome, that's all—and they didn't recognize her vague symptoms as the warning signs of ovarian cancer.

Almost a year ago, my aunt died after a three-year struggle with ovarian cancer. She, too, had experienced vague symptoms and consulted multiple doctors for months before her cancer was finally discovered.

One of the biggest reasons that ovarian cancer is so deadly is that the symptoms are so nonspecific. From that Mayo Clinic link comes this information:

Recent studies have shown that women with ovarian cancer are more likely than are other women to consistently experience the following symptoms:

• Abdominal pressure, fullness, swelling or bloating
  
• Urinary urgency
  
• Pelvic discomfort or pain
  

Additional signs and symptoms that women with ovarian cancer may experience include:

• Persistent indigestion, gas or nausea
  
• Unexplained changes in bowel habits, including diarrhea or constipation
  
• Changes in bladder habits, including a frequent need to urinate
  
• Loss of appetite
  
• Unexplained weight loss or gain
  
• Increased abdominal girth or clothes fitting tighter around your waist
  
• Pain during intercourse (dyspareunia)
  
• A persistent lack of energy
  
• Low back pain
  

Now, how many of those problems have you experienced off and on? A lot, right? Gas, bloating, indigestion, constipation or diarrhea. Apparently what marks these as suggestive of ovarian cancer is persistence and worsening—rather than coming and going or acting up depending on what you've eaten, if those vague abdominal symptoms just don't go away, it's not a bad idea to ask your physician to give you a workup to rule out ovarian cancer. This might include a transvaginal ultrasound (using what I like to call the "cooter wand"), a rectovaginal exam (like a pelvic exam, only with two entry points), and/or a blood test to check your CA-125 level. (Note: CA-125 tests can be false-positive and freak you out, or miss many early-stage ovarian cancer cases, so it's not the be-all and end-all of ovarian cancer detection.)

On Saturday, May 3, I'll be taking part in the 11th Annual Break the Silence: Walk for Ovarian Cancer, held by the Illinois chapter of the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition. The NOCC is the nation's leading ovarian cancer public information and education organization; the group promotes research, raises awareness about ovarian cancer, and provides support for women and families dealing with the disease. If you'd like to sponsor me, please visit my donation page. There's no minimum donation, and every little bit helps. I'm hoping to raise $500 overall.

Thanks for your consideration, and please spread the word about ovarian cancer's nonspecific and deceptive symptoms. Many women and many physicians don't think to suspect ovarian cancer, so it's incumbent on all of us to be familiar with the symptoms and be able to advocate for ourselves and the women we care for.