A Girl...

Oh, I have an eharmony story. Not mine though, but someone else's. Anyway this guy that my mother dated in college met someone via eharmony and they were married last summer. And the guy that runs eharmony - you know, the one in the commercials - he came to their wedding and gave a toast at the reception.

The end.

(I never said I was a good story teller. Sorry)

That's awesome. I just want to be on the eHarmony commercials, being all shiny and talky about how we "met cute." Now that I'm no longer eligible to give a book review on Reading Rainbow, this is my new dream.

Also, I was totally on your blog while you were leaving that comment! Psychic bloggers!

I would have commented sooner but I was busy removing several sperm samples I had left next to the frozen yogurt. My feeling on the breast milk hinge on what the boobs the milk springs from look like. Can you provide evidence so I can decide?

Also, eHarmony seems very creepy to me. I would not be surprised it it's revealed that that guy in the commercials is a Furry or something.

I'm on a comment rampage. It's nobody's business but yours when you get married.

I think the skeeve factor of eHarmony has something to do with its religious affiliation...

And no, you can't see the boobs.

I'll have to go to my other source in that office. Wait is that who the boobs belong to?

NO. GAH.

I don't have an opinion on the breastmilk-in-proximity-to-adult-food debate, but I gotta say it's really weird to walk in on a coworker at a new job that you had no idea was married (she looked about 18), let alone had a baby for whom she was pumping, pumping in an out-of-the-way bathroom. Man, those were some weird-looking boobs. Mostly because they were being suctioned. I felt awful for walking in on her and never spoke to her again (it wasn't hard, it was a big workplace and I only worked there a few months).

As long as the breastmilk isn't leaking on your burrito, I don't see the problem. I mean, if the burrito is half-eaten, doesn't that mean that there was saliva on it? I won't go into the whole there's-probably-poop-on-everything-we-eat-anyway.

I'd ask your co-worker why it's so important to her that you get married. But I'm confrontational that way. Lemme know if you want me to ask!

I just have to say OMG Reading Rainbow, I LOVED that show! :)

I worked somewhere where there was a problem with people stealing other people's food. So one day taped to the door of the fridge was a note saying "To whoever stole my bottle of milk for their coffee, because of you my baby went hungry. That was my breast milk that I'd expressed. I hope you really enjoyed it."

I'm not grossed out by the breast milk. But I am grossed out by people's leftovers. I guess because I feel as though people would be responsible about not letting their breast milk sit in the fridge sprouting new organisms but the same cannot be said for turkey pot pie.

I do get the same sort of questions about marriage-but in the sense that everyone and their mom knows that "I am Expected to Get Married" in this very, very cultural, parentally involved sense and I love to entertain people with my Arranged Marriage Diaries so it's kind of a joke, really. Plus, the three or four people who ask me about it are ones I genuinely like and I feel are happy for me rather than Trying To Make a Point, if you know what I mean.

Dunno if your co-worker is TTMaP in an oh-so-snide manner but if I ever encountered that I would be feeling pretty fangy...so I kinda think you have the patience of a saint.

Express is such a weird word for it. Like I need breast milk, STAT! But I don't. No, no. Not me. I just meant in a hurry. Oh you know what I mean.

It is none of anyone's business when or if you decide to get married. It's also incredibly rude of her to mention it. I'm a fan of the old, "Why do you want to know?" response to any prying question. The only truthful answer is, "I'm nosy." Alas and alack, you'll rarely get someone so honest.

This coworker is Not One To Be Reckoned With, and besides, I don't care what her motivations are since her opinion is of no consequence to me. To be clear, I'm not wounded in any particular way when she does ask--just annoyed, the way I would be if she asked about any single thing every time I saw her. Anyway, she only comes into the office once a month, and she's completely cool aside from the fact that she thinks she's my mother or something.

p.s. She got married at age 36.

Will, your eHarmony creep-out factor is justified, given that the CEO is a bit of a religious nutter, and they actively discourage gay and lesbian couples. If I were single and looking, I would run run RUN for the hills from eHarmony.

I say, pour some regular old milk into an open bowl and leave it in the fridge labeled "LEAH'S BREAST MILK." Like a big ol' mixing bowl.

Ha. I amuse myself.

Okay, GET THIS: I just went to the office kitchen and who followed me in there but Breast Milk Lady, who proceeded to open her case of Expressing Implements so she could put her refrigerated byproduct in it. So I...saw...suctioners...

BUT THEN! She asked how the house was coming along and then--using a very strong semicolon, quite possibly a period, so yay for that--she asked how the "making it official" was coming along. (!!!) I told her we're many hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt together and if that's not committment, I don't know what it. p.s. She got married at 32.

I love you, Jenn.

@ TheOtherBear: Re the lady who put the note on the fridge: Fuck her and her passive aggressive notes. She should have labeled the bottle. What about the poor person who wanted half and half and got a mouthful of titty sauce? Everybody is concerned for the children but kids are resilient, she'll make more.

Will, I think it was brilliant, actually. That doesn't bother me in the slightest. (I'd heard a variation of it before, so it's been used many times). Honestly, people who steal office food of any kind are the lowest of the low in my book, and deserve a mouthful of breastmilk, oh yes they do.

I agree, people who steal food do suck, and deserve some sort of nastiness. I'll adjust my list of bad people to read as follows:

1- Pedophiles
2- Animal Abusers
3- People Who Wear Ironic T-Shirts
4- Office Food Stealers

Is it just me or are you missing an 'e in that glittering invitation?

I'll have you know that I'm a breast milk expresser. And I store it in the fridge at work. I keep it in a soft-sided cooler though so no one can accidentally SEE it. Because I'm still not used to the whole "expressing" milk thing and feel all embarrassed when co-workers see me walking to the "Mother's Suite" knowing that they know what I'm about to do. I feel that the benefits of Kate getting my milk outweigh the weirdness of it all. At least I got past the stage where having a baby suck my boob was weird. Because believe me, it was.
Boos are so sexualized in our culture. But they are for babies, too!

Boobs are sexualized!

When I pumped at work, I always kept my...goods...in the pump's cooling compartment, by my desk. Breast milk can go without refrigeration for awhile. I understand that you don't want someone else's fluids to touch your burrito but I'll bet you'll feel a bit differently about it when you have your own wee one (someday -- no rush!).

My theory on the whole breast milk thing is while it is a bodily fluid thing, it is also food. So I'm ok with it.
And I so agree on the being in thousands of dollars in debt thing committment. I mean seriously. We'll get around to the legal part sometime eventually. (We are a pair of procrastinators.)

I haven't had time to read any blogs or comment lately, but this one caught my eye in my reader. I work with several mothers and a few years ago, someone's breast milk LEAKED ONTO MY LUNCHBOX. My canvas lunchbox. I was NOT okay with that!!! Eek! I made a fuss and people have been better about placing their bodily fluid in more leak-proof packaging.

Beck--That's it exactly. I just wonder why she's not more modest about everyone in the whole office seeing her breast milk. It's like she put it in the most visible place of all. Might as well have tacked it onto the bulletain board next to the meeting schedule, right?

Aliastaken--Yes, that was my special nod to MySpace culture. ;)

Aw, sweetie!

Does it bother you when milk from a nasty COW is in the fridge? Or is it that the cow isn't in the next cubicle over? :-)

P.S. A breastfeeding blogger who also writes a breastfeeding blog can't resist responding to this, you know......

That's my question, Cagey: Is it worse because I know the cow?

(Honestly, it's that she put it right there in front of everyone and I think that's a bit insensitive, not just to the poor men, who generally don't deal well with this stuff, but for women who, say, want babies and can't have them for whatever reason. It was just a little flaunty for me. Put it in a paper bag or something, yo. That's what I do with my half-eaten burrito so as not to gross people out, even though eating a burrito is "perfectly natural." (So is taking a shit, but we have rules about that too, right?)

the gateway fluid that throws wide the doors for coworkers to start storing their sperm samples and cord blood and, oh, I don't know what else

Placenta smoothies?

glorious square-footage (1,200 legally; twice that "without permits"; thrice if you count the unfinished basement)

And I still say that the square footage of your basement doesn't count as bonus floorspace if it's also equal to the cubic footage of said location.

Your coworker sounds like the rudest person in the world. Only people who are extremely boring and insecure would seriously make comments like that.

Of course, the other milk in the fridge is the bodily fluids of an animal that spends most of its life covered in shit. Sure, it's pasteurized, but you slurp that down, right? *evil grin*

Given that my opinion as non-nursing nonmother probably means shit, I would be a little surprised to find breast milk not stored in a cooler in the refrigerator. I'm also the unofficial fridge cleaner, so I tend to throw out everything NOT in a cooler at least twice a month. Not that a mother would forget the breast milk for her kid, but if I didn't know about it, I could see me throwing out what I thought was someone's old milk and not finding out until afterwards.

I have zero problems with breast milk near my food. My chix salad sandwich is right this minute next to the nursing mom in our office's milk stash right now in the office 'fridge. Said nursing mom has also pumped in my presence. I just don't care about stuff like that.

But I do have my own lines. Another co-worker was telling a very detailed (and she thought, funny) story about poop the other day and I was pretty much yelling, "STOP, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, JUST STOP!" by mid-way through it. So, you know, we all have our quirks. :-)

32? 36? When does it matter what age people get married? Who is counting?

I don't know how I'd feel, personally, about breastmilk being in the fridge. I think I'd probably just try to ignore it... but really, my roommate leaves grosser things (mold, etc.) in our fridge. Also, a woman I work with met her husband on eHarmony.

Also also, the final sparkly graphic makes my eyes burn... "your," gah.

I don't think she was being rude, either about the breast milk or about the marriage thing. Just kind of oblivious.

And a final word on the breast-milk-at-the-front-of-the-mostly-empty-office-refrigerator issue: Just because something is natural doesn't mean we shouldn't observe certain social mores out of respect for others. It's like holding in a fart until you get out of the elevator; it's just the nice thing to do.

We live in a "Breast Is Best"-crazed society and while I agree that milk o' the boob is best for babies I think there is so much pressure on women to breastfeed so then those who do, who are making the necessary sacrifices to provide milk for their babies, feel a certain sense of pride about it. Like, "Look at me! How hard I'm pumping my nips to squeeze out every last drop of this liquid gold. I am so special and am the best mother ever. Hey, there's my milk in the office fridge. I hope everyone notices it so they know what a wonderful mom I am! I rock!" I am sure she's not really like that, but I know that many moms who breastfeed are often quite proud.
On the other hand, I do know that I used to be quite modest about my boobs and I thought breastmilk was icky until I had to start pumping for my own child. Then if someone was over and it was time to pump, as I was unloading my huge boob from my shirt I could kind of mumble, "Are you OK with this? I hope so, because I'm doing it anyways. Everyone I know has already seen my nipples and my ripping perineum anyways so what have I to hide?" Modesty became a thing of the past.
Holy cow, I'm rambling today. Do I get a few gold stars for the world's longest comment? I don't even have a point here, just felt like hearing myself type.
Bye!

I don't get it. If you drink milk, that comes from cow boobies. Wouldn't milk that comes from your own species seem better/not so weird? Cows drink milk from cow boobies, what's so weird about humans "seeing" a bottle of human milk from human boobies?

1. I eat cow meat but that doesn't mean I eat human meat.

2. I clean my cat's litterbox, but that doesn't mean I want to clean my coworker's litterbox.

3. You wipe your kids' butts, but does that mean you'll wipe mine too?

Dealing with the body emissions of other adults in the workplace is just one of those things the owners of those body emissions should be sensitive about, whether it's breast milk or urine samples front and center in the mostly empty fridge or not flushing the toilet. I mean, I like to smell my own farts. Why doesn't everybody else? I just don't understand!

It't not about "right" or "natural," it's about being courteous.