Oh, Martha!

Halloween is tomorrow, and parents the world over are undoubtedly gluing the last eyeball on, painting the last polka dot, or affixing the last whisker. You can't go wrong with a homemade costume - there's something undeniably endearing about sending your little one out amongst their peers looking like a deranged easter bunny. It's a labor of love. But there's a line one mustn't cross - and Martha Stewart, you just crossed it.

Don't get me wrong - the woman is clearly a virtuoso for all things homemade, but when I saw these pictures of homemade baby costumes, I was, well, disturbed.

I sense a common theme here - did the witch from Hantzel and Gretel come up with these? I mean, what the hell is cute about pretending your baby is cooked up on a plate surrounded by wilted greens and orange sauce?

Message for Martha's creative department: put down the bong and step away...quickly.

You See Some Weird Shit at the Gym

You see some weird shit at the gym. Having recently re-started my exercise routine in an effort to not look like something resembling a bloated hippopotamus, I had almost forgotten the zany crap that goes on -- quite freely -- inside the four walls of a fitness center. I was bobbing away on the elliptical to Ciara's "Get Up", happily daydreaming about the days of a smaller ass, when something caught my attention. It broke with the natural rhythm of the room. Rather then the steady back and forth, fluid motion you would expect on a elliptical, the man on the machine next to me decided to place both of his feet on one pedal, pumping his arms so that his body oddly went round about like he was straddling a deranged pogo stick.

But then I had this thought - who's to say he isn't some trained expert at this, and not some loose cannon show off? Looking around, I noticed other men and women, their bodies contorted into positions that would rival the raunchiest kama sutra manual. And yet, because we're in a gym, nothing is questioned. "They must have some sort of insider knowledge or work with a trainer to know how to do that," we tell ourselves. That, or the gym just became one more place for people to fly their freak flags - proudly.

Superwoman, super spider?

Okay, I admit it's been waaay too long since I last posted. I've committed the cardinal sin of blogging 101 - blog early, blog often. Seeing as snow was on the ground the last time you heard from me, and now summer is practically around the corner, I'm determined you all receive a frequent dose of banter. And oddly enough, this actually is a nice segway.

Living in Boston, your choices for dwellings are limited - old as shit and expensive, or high end and expensive. Unfortunately for me and the hubs, we live in the former. And what comes with an older home? Bugs, and lots of 'em. Having lived in our apartment for some four years now, we've become much too familiar with the metamorphosis that happens as the winter weather begins to fade and spring time comes rolling in. Spiders - freaky looking, yellowish-gray, fast as lightning spiders - come out to play. Being aracnaphobic, this is the time of year I hate the most. But that's not the worst part.

Where, for whatever ungodly reason, do they like to take up shop? Our bathroom. The one place where the last thing you want to worry about as you're completely exposed is the thought of a spider dropping down on your bare ass. Now usually for me, the mere site of one of these arachnids results in a high pitched shriek, followed by my husband running into the next room to see if I accidentally cut off my left arm. Since by the sound of things, you would think that were the case. But no, I've just spotted one of these freakish things and I need him to kill it - immediately. Now for all of you bug lovers out there, I apologize, but to my credit there are plenty of spiders out there that killing one or two every now again won't hurt anything. Those suckers multiply by the hundreds (I shudder at the thought).

Unluckily for me, last weekend I was in such a predicament - but my husband was nowhere to be found. "I can do this - I'm a tough cookie," I told myself. So I grabbed a wadded up piece of toilet paper - large enough to put out a small grease fire - and courageously stepped up onto the side of my tub so I could come eye to eye with the beast. Quickly slapping the side of the wall with my toilet paper knight, I pulled the wad away thinking I was victorious. No sooner had I done so then the spider - hanging from its spidey web - came flying at my face, to which I responded with my trademark shriek and rapidly threw my failed executor to the ground. I could hear my landlord on the floor above rapidly move his feet around - no doubt in response to my commotion. "They probably think I'm being attacked by a wild alpaca!" I thought. So I immediately started yelling, "Spider! Large spider!" so they wouldn't come running in to find me down to my skivvies, a saber-toothed spider coming at me.

What I'm leaving out is that my mother, god bless her, gave me one of those bug vacuum suckers for Christmas to help me in my pursuit of killing all-things creepy-crawly. Dutifully grabbing my saber, I position it over the spider - who is running at lightning speed straight toward me - and turn the power on. What they don't tell you on the box? That once you suck that bug into the tube, it stays alive!

So now I have this humongous spider frantically crawling back and forth in its makeshift coffin. They should really create these things with a button that injects a Raid-like substance to ensure they're bumped off once and for good. So now I'm thinking, "I have to release this sucker back into the wild?! What if it takes my face off when I let it free?" Thinking I was being smart, I position the bug sucker over the toilet. "Quick like a band aid, I'll just detach the tube from the vacuum and the spider will fall into the toilet," I rationalize.

But the spider didn't fall into the toilet. It's frantically running down the side of the toilet toward freedom. In all my shrieking glory, my first instinct is to grab the bug vacuum again and -with a resounding whack! - dutifully kill the lil' bugger once and for all.

I am woman, hear me roar.

Wash, Rinse, Repeat: "I Love My Job?"

Lately I've been recalling the scene in Devil Wears Prada when Emily Blunt's character, after yet another ass-handing from her ever-so-monstrous boss played by Meryl Streep, returns to her desk and begins chanting, "I love my job, I love my job, I love my job." I realize I'm extremely fortunate to have a job that allows me to put food on the table, pay rent and yes, occassionally splurge on a massage or two. (Despite the fact that the whole reason I've been getting them lately is in direct correlation to my soul crushing job.)

Given the current economic climate, clearly a bird in hand is worth two in the bush. But let me pose this question: if you're unhappy - truly "I'd rather have a colonoscopy administered by a blind chimp than keep this job" unhappy - at what point does your paycheck even matter if you leave your job every day feeling defeated?

Operation Skinny Jeans

Like many of you out there, I recently started a diet in an attempt to fit back in to my skinny jeans. We all have them - one pair of glorious jeans that, just by the successful zipping up of, invoke's an exuberant rush of "oh my god I thought this day would never come" euphoria. This is, of course, equal only to the feeling of scoring a sweet pair of diamond studs from the hubs or rocking the Coach Hampton Signature Madeline Tote on your pleased-as-punch arm.

But I digress -- after two months of shake slurping, bar snacking hell, I gained enough confidence to peer in to the back of my closet, dust off my old friend and cautiously step in to each leg as I contemplated whether my thighs have shrunk enough to allow the passage of the zipper in the upward direction.

Halle-freaking-lueigh, not only did the zipper go up, but my derriere is starting to take a shape other than humungous.

But my confidence was short lived. Sitting at my desk at work this morning, I started to realize that all that's keeping my thighs from full-on exposure is a thin layer of fitted, dark Express denim. Suddenly I have a flashback of the scene in the Great Outdoors when a shot gun disguised as a lamp is shot at a large girizzly bear's butt in an attempt to scare it away from mauling Dan Aykroyd. If you haven't seen the movie, this will be a hard image for you to picture. No sooner did the shot go off then the fur on the bear's butt is blown wide open - revealing too very large (clearly fake) exposed bear buttocks.

Needless to say, it wasn't hard to make the comparison that this could be my fate as well. If that isn't motivation to stay on a diet, I don't know what is.

Boston Banteress Here

Welcome to Boston Banteress.  A place for me to rant, rave, cast witty banter and otherwise dish about all the goings on of this twenty-something Bostonian as I contemplate quitting my (nearly) anti-depressant inducing job, consume massive quantities of chocolate (love those Snyder's), self medicate with the help of chick flicks, friends and wine (having recently developed an affinity to Malbec), navigate my newly wedded bliss with the hubs, and otherwise reflect upon the inner workings of my (overly) dramatic little world.  

Read. Enjoy. Comment if you'd like. 

:-* The Banteress