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Starshine Roshell Posts

Parental Kissing: Ewww

Published by Starshine Roshell on November 22, 2012

There are certain things a woman likes to hear after she kisses a man on the mouth: “Wow … please … more” and “Sweet cheeses, I’m in love” and “You taste like Wildlicious Pop-Tarts.”

But even “What do you think you’re doing, you trollop?” and “That is a LOT of saliva” would be preferable to what I hear after I kiss my husband: “Ewwww.”

The aspersion comes not from my spouse but from our 7-year-old son, an undersized-and-outspoken Puritan who finds even the chastest of our amorous embraces repugnant. Mind you, this child is not easily made queasy. He mixes fruit punch with Dr. Pepper and spoons applesauce onto his chicken nuggets, and I’ve seen the kid blithely pluck a strangled, desiccated lizard from a soccer net with a monkey wrench. Yet he finds nothing so disgusting as my lips touching his dad’s.

“Yuck.” “Nasty.” “Not again. Seriously? Come on!” It’s tough not to take that personally. I mean, why the horror? “Because the sound is gross,” he says.

Unfair! Sometimes we’re completely, no-slurping silent, I swear. He still cringes. “It just makes me … (sigh) … It’s just gross!”

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Dashing Through the SLO

Mini-Vibrators

Published by Starshine Roshell on October 25, 2012

I don’t want to brag, but my purse is a fricking wonderland. My fully loaded, survivalist handbag contains the tools to halt both heartburn and sunburn. The treasures rolling around in there can eradicate six straight days of headaches and stave off two, maybe three meals in a row. They can address a menstrual emergency, obliterate germs on shopping cart handles, and fashion a failed blowout into a casually fabulous chignon. But what my purse cannot do is produce a basic orgasm. And now I feel kind of lame about that.

I recently learned about a line of mini-vibrators that are disguised as basic, unsexy cosmetics — a faux lipstick, mascara tube, blush brush, and mirrored compact, each promising 80 full minutes of buzzing in two modes: “please” and “tease.” Why pose as makeup? It ain’t because they both bring color to your cheeks.

Billed as a “fashionably discreet sexcessory,” each little pleasure wand is meant to be tossed into your bag so that it’s handy … er, “when you need it the most.” I did some research (and I’m convinced the Internet was invented for precisely this purpose) and found others that double as a hairbrush, a pack of Life Savers, and even a lint roller, which is about as unhot as it gets.

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We did it!

May I Have This Dance?

Published by Starshine Roshell on October 11, 2012

The moment had come. She stood there pretty as a picture, and he was nervous as could be. Could he pull it off? Would she say yes? “I pulled out a rose, got down on one knee, and popped the question,” the young man said. “She was just staring in disbelief, like, ‘What is going on right now?’ But she said yes — thank gosh.”

What makes this story strange is that the happy couple aren’t adults, they’re high-schoolers. And this wasn’t a marriage proposal, it was just an invitation to the homecoming dance.

But in fact, there’s no such thing as “just an invitation” to a dance anymore. Teens all over America have taken to grand, showy gestures to land a date to homecoming or prom.

“You have to,” explained Jack Haley, the question-popping San Marcos High School junior mentioned above. “It’s expected. You can’t go up to a girl and just go, ‘Hey, you wanna go to homecoming with me?’ because the girl will say, ‘Ask me in a better way,’ and you won’t get any respect from your peers.”

Inspired by watching The Last of the Mohicans in history class, he wooed his date by blasting the movie’s theme song from his car in the school parking lot as he fended off faux attackers (his “bros”) with a plastic sword, shouting, “No, she’s mine!” When the last bro was mock-slain, Haley knelt and asked the amused, confused girl to the dance.

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Go, Losers!

Published by Starshine Roshell on September 27, 2012

Men are supposed to be the logical ones. The more rational sex. And to the extent that they’ll fetch a tool or phone a repairman when something breaks — as opposed to weeping, repenting to the callous gods of karma, and then yelling at it, as I typically do — I concede that guys are largely governed by reason.

But when football season begins, their logic vanishes like a bowl of Hot Wings Doritos in front of a flat screen on a Sunday afternoon. (I know, I’m generalizing. Brace yourself because I’m going to do it some more.)

Football fans spend four months of every year hooting and rooting for teams that they’ve chosen to support for cockamamie reasons.

“Where I grew up, I was a Bears fan. It was expected of me. It was the right thing to do.” … “I bought my son a Broncos sweatshirt when he was 3. He’s still a fan.” … “I’ve liked the 49ers since I was young because games in Kezar Stadium looked so glorious when it was snowing in my native Ohio. And the red and gold looked much better than the hideous schemes offered by the Bengals and the Browns.”

Implicit obedience? Wardrobe attachment? Color schemes? These are dudes we’re talking about — right?

They pledge their undying, unsound fidelity to a team because it’s the one their dad rooted for. Or rooted against … whichever. My husband still flies the Raiders flag because, as a boy, he loved Ken Stabler’s nickname, “The Snake.” My sons chose their teams because “I wanted an underdog” and “my best friend hates them.”

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Kid Herding

Published by Starshine Roshell on September 13, 2012

Never mind the baby books. Forget the motherhood magazines. Everything I needed to know about parenting I learned from other parents. Wiser parents. Parents who went before me, hacking through the murky jungles of momhood with the Machete of Courageous Experimentation and calling back to me each time they lurched into the Quicksand of Poor Parenting: “Okay. So you’re gonna need a rope …”

When I was pregnant, a friend advised me to get a pedicure because I’d be spending countless hours of labor staring at my feet in stirrups and would be disheartened if — on top of soul-splitting, sanity-rattling, life-begetting contractions — I had icky toes. I got the pedicure, and the merciful, thank-ya-Jesus foot massage that went with it. It was the best advice I ever got.

The best advice my husband ever got also came while I was pregnant. An experienced dad told him, “Listen, there will be a moment when you have a strong urge to hurl your crying baby at the wall. Sounds crazy, I know. Just trust me, it’ll come. And here’s all you need to remember: Don’t do that.” We figured the guy for a nut-job until … it came. And my husband heeded the advice — relieved to know he wasn’t the only frustrated father to have ever needed it.

Even now, with my oldest entering high school, I’ve benefited from the been-there-learned-that counsel of my friends with older kids: Take Spanish in the summer, bring blankets to the football games, and choose water polo for PE; it’s the only sport where your kids come home nearly clean.

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Ventura

She's a Bad Mammograma

Published by Starshine Roshell on August 30, 2012

Do you know what I love about mammograms?

Neither do I, but I’m open to suggestions. Because my current feelings on the procedure are unaffectionate.

My friends refer to mammograms as “the boob mash” and “getting squished.” The annual exam falls into that category of medical must-dos — along with Pap smears and dental cleanings — that we work hard to avoid thinking about. Before, after, and even during the dreaded appointment, we simply banish all thoughts of it from our minds — a disciplined-if-desperate meditation on anything at all but the bootie-wearing stranger unceremoniously kneading our chesticles.

But during my recent exam, several especially awkward moments yanked me right out of my blissful bubble of denial, forcing me to confront the full-frontal affront of this fondle-and-flatten ritual.

There’s something overly cutesy about my mammogram office. Like a pediatric dentist’s, compensating with giant grins and happy hues for the misery they’re about to cause you, the receptionists here are unreasonably jaunty, the décor unseasonably pink.

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