I do not have a witty and entertaining blog topic to write about this week. Instead, I have a list of excuses as to why I couldn’t come up with something funny for your reading pleasure. Here they are:

1.  A tick bit me two weeks ago. Burrowed right in and made my left butt cheek its new home. Though it has since been extracted and no bull’s-eye has formed around the bite, I am suffering from the devastating effects of psychosomatic Lyme disease. These symptoms include: general crankiness (must be the tick bite), pain in my knee (sure, this happens every time it rains, but this time I’m convinced it’s Lyme), and an alarming shortage of blog post ideas.
2. I was too busy practicing the perfect selfie smile (see photo below).
3. I had a dream the other night that I owned a baby goat. This might be because the lawn is too long, and in my dream this adorable baby goat was doing a great job with grass maintenance. My point is, I wasted all my writing time searching for free baby goats on Craig’s List.
4. I decided that this week was the week to cross "build a fort out of cotton balls" off of my bucket list. The good news: it's soft and makes me sleepy. The bad news: I grind my teeth when I sleep. Have you ever ground down on a cotton ball? Traumatizing!
5. Maybe I just didn’t feel like writing anything this week. 
6. I bought a home waxing kit, and subsequently passed out for three days from the pain.
7. I’ve been ignoring Daylight Savings Time for the past fifteen years, and it finally caught up with me. I thought this was last week, when I already had a blog idea.
8.  I saw Jurassic World, and have been spending all my free time sewing tiny velociraptor costumes for the cats.
9.  I was busy writing a scathing letter to the people in charge of Microsoft Word, demanding that their spellcheck feature recognize “velociraptor” as a real word.
10. The word “apanthropinization” is now officially obsolete. I decided to mourn this loss by actively doing it.

There you go. I also learned an important lesson: thinking up excuses about why I wasn't writing a blog post was about as much work as actually writing one. I had to look up "apanthropinization," pester my best writing friend for help when I got stuck on number six, stop to watch videos of adorable baby goats . . . I'm exhausted. 
Must be the psychosomatic Lyme disease.

On this Father's Day, I thought I'd share some wisdom that my father has been kind enough to impart on me over the years. Things like . . .

When fishing, choose your bait wisely. 
You're not going to catch stripers with a squid jig, that's for sure. If what you're hoping to attract is something slimy and tentacle-y and spits ink, then by all means, break out the colorful and wildly inappropriate jigs. Just kidding—you're not leaving the house dressed like that, young lady. Go get yourself a nice, sensible lure, preferably with a high neckline.

Do something you love, and don't apologize for it.
My dad is a farmer. He's been retired for years, but he's still a farmer. He loves animals, can identify every plant in New England by sight and/or taste, and by golly, you haven't lived until you've heard him describe the intricacies of artificially inseminating a cow. He never apologizes for any of this—he doesn't have to. The man knows his stuff. If you don't want to hear about frozen bull semen over dinner, eat somewhere else. It is because of him that I don't feel the need to apologize if I've taken twenty minutes to describe the intricacies of dependent clauses in sentence structure. Maybe you're bored, but I'm having the time of my life.

If you don't love it, quit—but have a backup plan.
I'll never forget the smile on my father's face when I told him I wanted to quit taking dance lessons. The idea that he'd never have to sit through a recital again, watching his daughter pirouette when everyone else was shuffle-ball-changing, didn't upset him at all. I told him I planned on taking art classes instead.
"Will there be recitals?" he asked. 
"No," I said, and Dad hugged me. "But you'll come to my art shows, right?"
Immediately, his face fell. Oh, well. Dad was never much of a hugger anyway.

Never stop learning.
One of the best things about my father is that he can do anything. I know people always say this about their dads, but in my father's case, it's totally true. Fix a car, skin a deer, build a solid investment portfolio, cook a gourmet meal using nothing but greens from the lawn and a random turtle, build a shed, repair a television using toothpicks, gum, and duct tape . . . my dad can do it. If he's never done it before, he'll learn how to do it. And then he'll teach his family. Turtle soup, anyone?

Never put your hand in a corn chopper.
Dad's all about making wise decisions. He was adamant that his daughters be safe when we lived on the farm, insisting that we stay away from blades, heavy machinery, and farm hands. My point: Dad is a big proponent of common sense. Don't stick your hand into a clogged chopper blade unless you *want* to be called Stumpy for the rest of your life.

There's no crying in baseball.
Was that Dad or Tom Hanks? Could've been Dad—he's not a big fan of tears—but I suspect it was Tom Hanks. Wait, I think what Dad said was "Listen to your mother." That certainly makes more sense.

Happy Father's Day, Dad! Thanks for making the term "farmer's daughter" something to be proud of.

Bra shopping is not the titillating excursion you men seem to think it is. I don’t think I'm asking for much, but it’s practically impossible to find a bra that fits well, lifts, separates, looks pretty, and makes the girls look twenty years younger.

I recently had to go bra shopping. I’ve been on a diet, and there has been some shrinkage of the boobage, which of course nobody mentions when they talk about how great losing weight is. Probably because the prospect of having to figure out your new bra size, then finding something decent that does the job, is an experience that will drive you to cram the HoHos in an effort to avoid it. But I’m a big girl (okay, not so big—that’s what made the trip necessary in the first place). I decided to take my measurements to get an idea of what size I might be, then head over to Kohl’s, as they were having a sale.

I found a few different websites that explained how to measure your band and cup size. This involved measuring around the waist under the cleavage, then around the back above the girls, to verify band size. I did so, and found that the difference was approximately two and a half inches. None of the sites knew what to do about this. Apparently, these two measurements should’ve been the same, and I was a freak of nature. Next, to determine cup size, one must measure across the bust, then subtract the band size. I measured three or ten different times. I sprinkled dust from a unicorn’s horn on my measuring tape and chanted “Beetlejuice” three times. Nothing helped. According to my measuring tape, I was either a 32A or a 40DD.

Armed with this completely useless information, I headed to the store.

The thing about bras is that if you want a good one, they’re not cheap. I found several lovely selections that would’ve required me to roll over a CD if I wanted to actually purchase them. However, I was not there for the rhinestones and push-up padding. I headed right for the Warner’s and Bali, which may just as well have been labeled the “sensible” section.

Bra labeling had changed over the years. Gone are the days of just choosing between “18-hour support” or “all-day support.” I was looking at t-shirt bras, concealing petals, bands that reduced underarm bulge, cups that would make me look up to two sizes bigger, and minimizers. There were “satin tracings” and “comfort revolution” selections; “ultra light illusion” and “smooth-n-seamless.” I just wanted something that kept my boobs off of my belly. I grabbed a handful of brassieres that promised to hide my unsightly back-fat rolls (something that I had never once in my life even thought about, until Bali planted the notion in my head) in sizes ranging from 32A to 40DD, and headed for the dressing room.

Four hours later, I had one—yes, one—bra. It was practical, white, lifted and separated, and though it wasn’t particularly sexy, it did have a little lace bow right between the cups. My size was neither a 32A nor a 38D, but somewhere in between. It was a sensible size. I felt like a real grown-up that had achieved a minor victory that day as I left Kohl’s.

I tried out my new bra that week. I wore it on Tuesday. By the end of the day, the straps were digging into my shoulders, the band was riding up my back, and I kept having to run to the ladies’ room to rearrange my décolletage. I called the manufacturer and complained.

“But how’s your back fat?” the saleslady trilled. “All we promised was that you’d have no unsightly back-fat rolls. You don’t, do you?”

She had a point. It did occur to me, however, that I would also have no back fat rolls if I stopped wearing the darn thing and went commando—er, brammando.

I haven’t been this comfortable in years.