I really don’t want to cut into our annual virtual Thanksgiving meal (please bring a dish and try mine), but Josh sent me this Siri parody (maybe not appropriate for work unless you keep the sound down low) and asked me a question about it. I’ll tell you my answer after you tell me yours:

Was there a point where it stopped being funny to you or did you laugh until the end? Or did you not laugh at all? In other words, was there a point where you were smiling and then you weren’t smiling? Or was it all funny? Or all not funny?

People magazine has named Bradley Cooper their sexiest man alive.  But, no, it doesn’t just come down to looks.

Ladies, take note: this Georgetown grad can whip up dinner, take you for a spin on his motorcycle and whisper sweet nothings in French (he’s fluent!). Just don’t try convincing him what a catch he is.

Wait, why are only ladies taking note?  What?  Men can’t enjoy gazing at Bradley Cooper’s dreamy… what colour are his eyes?… blue eyes? (I couldn’t actually tell what colour his eyes are in the photo, but it says in the first paragraph that he has “dazzling baby blues,” and I’m assuming that refers to his eyes and not that he has a less severe case of postpartum depression).

I don’t know if I find someone cooking, driving a motorcycle, or speaking French sexy per se.  I mean, I loved it when Josh first cooked me dinner, mostly because it was so endearing how much he had to concentrate on the recipe and what an enormous mess he made to impress me.  And being capable of operating a motorized vehicle is something many adults are capable of doing so I don’t jizz my pants every time I’m in traffic and observe all the people around me driving.  And with over 64 million people in France alone not to mention all other French-speaking countries and countless students who were forced to take a foreign language in order to graduate, I don’t find the ability to conduct a conversation in a second language all that enticing.  I mean, listen, if the man spoke fluent Ubbi Dubbi I’d be a little more impressed.  After all, how many people speak Ubbi Dubbi these days since Zoom went off the air?

The problem, of course, is that beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.  I don’t find Bradley Cooper particularly sexy. (I’m so sorry, Mr. Cooper, but maybe I’m not your cup of tea either.)   I didn’t get excited for Ryan Reynolds in 2010.  While I had an enormous crush on Johnny Depp back in his 21 Jump Street days, my eyes sort of skipped over him during his feature in 2009.  Or Hugh Jackman in 2008.  Which is to say that I have a deep respect for Hugh Jackman — think he’s a talented actor and I love the way he discusses his family — but I just don’t find him sexy.  Perusing back through all the old Sexiest Man Alive winners, I can’t say that People magazine and I have ever agreed.

If I ran People magazine, I’d slap Joshua Ford on the cover.  The man is sexy.  He runs out for emergency tampons when I don’t buy them because of superstitious, hopeful reasons.  He told me I was hot when we were in the throes of treatments and I felt anything but.  He takes all the twins’ night wakings, allowing me to sleep.  He cleans the snow off my windshield in the winter.  He still has all his hair and it’s not even greying.  He scrunches up his nose in excitement when he talks about the Pixies.

That’s who I’d put on the cover.

The Wolvog and Josh back when the Wolvog liked to pull the bottom of his shirt over his face and hang out.

And a close runner up is my celebrity-crush-since-last-February, Billie Joe Armstrong — even with his new blond hair.  (Josh claims he would never clear the snow from my windshield, and he’s probably right… though it could be because he’s from California and they don’t get a lot of snow there.  But he also just might not be a gentleman like that.  That’s sort of the problem with celebrity crushes — you just don’t know the actual person.)

Who would you put on the cover as People’s Sexiest Person Alive — both celebrity and non-celebrity?  Why person?  Because not every woman likes dudes.  Just sayin’, People.

Thank you for the anniversary wishes.  I sure do love that boy.

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The twins were asked to create a word problem in math class that they would also solve themselves both numerically and with a picture.  The Wolvog wrote: “Wolvog had seven iPhones.  His mum gave him three more iPhones.  Now how many does he have?”  He then proceeded to draw 10 iPhones featuring various apps (when he showed me his homework, he chuckled to himself, “I didn’t include Siri on this one since it’s actually an old iPhone 4 and not the iPhone 4S).

The ChickieNob is a little more dramatic, and she brought an intensity to her word problem, the likes of which I’ve never seen repeated on a xeroxed worksheet: “The Wolvog had 9 apples.  When he went to sleep, the ChickieNob took some and then he had 8.  How many apples… OH NO!  The Wolvog is coming… but how many apples?  How many apples did she take!”  She explained that she wanted the problem solver to feel the intensity of the apple theft, the fear of being caught.  It’s method mathematics.

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I get a lot of PR pitches, dozens of them each day.  Many are about pregnancy or baby products, which — as you can imagine — really make my day.  I mean, what infertile woman doesn’t love getting six emails in the span of two hours asking them to hawk baby stuff?

For a long time, my favourite PR pitch was one for beef jerky, that pointed out how much kids love jerky:

I think that the relevancy that our products have to your users is that Jerky is one of the biggest under-rated snack foods for kids!  Although my opinion may be biased.  It is high in essential nutrients like protein while being low in carbs, fats, and calories…plus it tastes good and kids enjoy eating it!  Not to mention the convenience and long shelf life.  I think it would be a good (and interesting product) for your users to read about.

So in one pitch, he managed to miss that I am (1) kosher, (2) a vegetarian, and (3) write about an inability to have children and therefore my readers most likely wouldn’t be looking for great snacks for kids.  I also liked that jerky was capitalized, as if it were a proper name.

That was my favourite one.

My new favourite is for bacon-lube.

I thought you might like this.

[Company name removed] is pleased to announce the launch of baconlube!  Yes, the world’s first bacon-flavored personal lubricant.

[Product name removed] is water based, proudly Made in America and is the gold standard of meat flavored massage oils.  Baconlube is like the McRib of sex – it’s delicious, makes men crazy, is here for a limited time and is in short supply, so don’t miss out.  We only made 3,000 bottles of this pork flavored nectar.

They thought I might like this?  It’s more like, “I love this!”  The best part is that they offered me my very own bottle — one of the 3,000 bottles of pork flavoured nectar — so I could have a meaty, salty vagina.  And I’m not sure how I can say no.

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November’s IComLeavWe kicks off on Monday so this weekend is the last chance to sign up.  When the list closes on Monday night, I’ll use the random number generator to choose one person from the list to have their Creme de la Creme submission moved to the #6 slot on the list).

Speaking of the Creme de la Creme, we have 134 submissions on the list.  Pretty please, don’t wait until last minute to get your submission in.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week as well as the week before.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Where’s My Hogwarts Letter?” (What the Blog)
• “I Made it to 1 Week, 5 Days…” (No Oven for the Bun)
• “iBliss” (Little Dragon Fruit)
• “Food Stamp Etiquette: Human Kindness” (Creating Motherhood)
• “The Allure and the Tyranny of the White Picket Fence” (Too Many Fish to Fry)
• “Enjoying Your Pregnancy! No, Seriously” (Too Many Fish to Fry)
• “That Time I Was Bullied – Repeatedly – As a Kid” (Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed)
• “How Can We Talk More Freely” (Bodega Bliss)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Les Terres Fertiles has a post about sex and infertility, namely, how sex changes when you discover you’re infertile.  I love her analogy: “The best analogy I can come up with at this point is hunting.  I’ve never hunted before, but I can imagine that if a hunter was told that they can continue to shoot their gun at targets, say, on some sort of shooting range, but they can’t go out and actually kill animals, that there would then be something important missing from the shooting experience, even though all the mechanics are the same.”  Truly, you need to read the entire post.

Eggs in a Row has a post about her sister-in-law’s loss and the awkward space she is in knowing about the loss without having been told about the pregnancy.  She sums it up like this: “I am frustrated that I am supposed to pretend that I don’t know, especially since my sister-in-law decided not to tell me that she was pregnant.  I’m assuming that she didn’t want to tell me because she knew a third sister would be upsetting, and I (as bad as this sounds) was relieved to pretend (to her) that I didn’t know, because it was less baby talk. But, now I’m in the position that I can’t tell her how sorry I am.”  I found the whole post very moving and kept thinking about it after I closed the blog.

Lastly, Scrambled Eggs has a post about a man she met on a flight.  It’s about how fate has a way of arranging airline seats so you’re sitting next to someone who has the potential to either change your life or change the way you see the world.  It’s a good story — go over and read it.

The roundup to the Roundup: I really do love that boy.  The ChickieNob and Wolvog’s math homework.  Would you turn down the baconlube?  Last chance to sign up for November’s IComLeavWe (and don’t forget your Creme de la Creme submission).  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between November 11th and November 18th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

Ten years ago this week, I was running on a treadmill when a news story came on the television in the corner of the gym.  It was an interview with the manager of an area soup kitchen saying that they didn’t have enough food for Thanksgiving due to the fact that in the wake of 9/11, people were giving their money to other charities.  She was worried they wouldn’t be able to put out a meal that week.

I ran upstairs and woke up Josh, who was still asleep because we took off a few days of work before our wedding.  And I hysterically told him about the soup kitchen and how we had to help or there would be no Thanksgiving dinner.  Josh did not point out how Thanksgiving turkey is pretty much meaningless to me since I’m a vegetarian.  He did not remind me of my last big idea which had probably occurred the day before.  He just nodded his head, picked up the phone, and called the soup kitchen.

The woman said she could use collard greens, and we lived next to a food store that had a shitload of collard greens.  He told her that we were on the case and I went to the food store to pick up the greens.  I cleared out what they had on display, shoving them into the provided plastic bags.  Then I went to the clerk and told him how much I enjoyed collard greens; how I wanted to make as much collard greens as was humanly possible.  I’m not sure why I couldn’t just tell him that we were donating them rather than making me look completely insane.  So he got all the crates of collard greens from the back storage of the store, and helped us bring the whole mess to Josh’s car in the parking lot.

So Josh filled his trunk (mind you, right before our wedding when I had also given him a bunch of other tasks to do) with bags and bags of collard greens.  His whole car ended up smelling like the greens — which you may believe have no smell, but you would be wrong.  When you amass that many collard greens, they sort of smell similar to earthy ketchup.

Josh drove those collard greens an hour downtown because I was too shy to go.

He didn’t laugh at me or roll his eyes or try to reason with me that a check would be easier than a collard green delivery.  He didn’t say, “this was your crazy idea; you go deliver a trunk-full of collard greens.”  No, he just gave me a kiss and said he’d see me in a bit, and he went downtown with his vegetable-laden trunk.

And that’s why I love him.

And because he can still laugh about it 10 years later.

Happy anniversary, Josh.

Photo Credit: Arvindgrover.