Magical Buttons

Aren't nipples super-duper? First of all, they're round and quite naturally hold onto the breast as a root to a tree; all in one. Not like some other body parts that just kinda hang there - but of course that's the male anatomy, and I've no more to say on that subject. Nipples are multi-purpose: they get bigger when it's puberty-time, they feel good when grabbed, so to speak, and they feed many a lucky infant, instantly transforming from an organ of sexual pleasure to a cream soda dispenser.

Nipples are handy if you have kids - they tranform into little baby-feeders, sprinkling milk like a big pinkish-brownish fountain. It kinda hurts, but it's a relief, too. Ball & Chain useta call me The Dairy Queen. Then later he expected to satisfy his curiosity. Ha! That was one time - or two- in my life when the nipples were off-limits to all sexual interations. They were feeding my baby, for crissake. Even having anyone else near them made me anxious. No blurring of the territory.

One night I had no choice. My breasts were engorged, the baby was fast asleep and wouldn't drink, and nothing was working. I woke up the B&C and ordered him to drink. He was a little groggy, but then he took the order. I was complaining "ouch - shit," "jesus - goddamn" "ouch," and he made little noises, like
"Mmm, this is good. It's kinda warm. It's a little sweet." Finally, when my breasts were back down to a reasonable size, I told him that was enough. He wasn't listening well. "Enough! Enough, already, it's over." He fell back into a contented slumber. I wondered if his lactose intolerance would kick in.

My dispensers always went together. The momma books said that after awhile tit left, Lola, would know that tit right, Rola, was the feeder of the moment. But no. Baby drank from Rola, and Lola spouted like a fountain in France. It wasn't so bad unless I ran outta breast pads, and a young girl came to the door to deliver some special post-natal equipment, and my shirt was soaked because I was exhausted looking after a 4-year-old and an infant, and I didn't give a shit about changing. This girl was maybe twenty, and I am quite sure she went directly from my doorstep to the gynecologist to have her tubes tied with whatever instrument they had handy.

Some of us need the nipple for good sex. Research shows that if you make your tits bigger, just for the helluvit, you may lose sensation in your nipples, among other unpleasantries. Yikes! Now some of us have no choice and this is not about that. This is about why risk it if your tits are perfectly fine, as is? I mean, without the nipple sensation, I might have been the first Jewish nun. My nipples are so sensitive that without them I would be lost in some hinterland of sexual ignorance. No nipple, no high point; no big bang, final release, home run. There would definitely be less interest in having sex with individuals over whom I believed myself to be in love, when really I just needed a little nipple manipulation.

When given the luxury of a healthy small breast that will be your happy companion in sexual endeavors, or a bigger breast that may be as useless as an elbow, why choose elbow? Truly, this is insanity - worse than denying the need for foreplay, even. Willingly removing that sensation is akin to refusing food when it's right in front of you. Aha! It's a sex diet. It's a fucking disorder, as opposed to an eating disorder. And isn't it all the more demented when there are women who truly have to consider this option? Don't give yourself a side effect when you don't have the goddamn disease! My buttons will remain as is, small and potent, lest fate deals me the proverbial lousy hand. Get those fake balloons outta my view - I'm keeping my tits available for all magical manipulations.

Drug Me Into The Blogosphere

I keep trying to write about nipples and somehow my breasts hurt, my conscience hurts, I dunno if I have my facts straight. They're popping up everywhere! First, I have my-daughter's-getting-older-fear, which is utterly moronic since I already have a teenager and I enjoy being with my kids as they grow. I have no nostalgia for babydom. That was then, this is now. It's like remembering my dinner before it was cooked. It looked good, but now it's really something.

Then, and this has nothing to do with nipples, Becca and I were discussing the obsessive nature of blogging while our - yikes - growing daughters ran around a restaurant. (Doesn't it seem absurd that restaurant isn't spelled restaraunt? Really.) Anyway, blogging is obsessive because you read you write you read, and then sometimes you wonder: how the hell did this woman have the time to write 500 pages and include excellent graphics to boot? Meanwhile, I keep going back to my nipples blog.

I was staring at my nipples blog. I was staring at my nipples, too, but that's another piece altogether. I was well-aware that I am depressed, recovering from not-so-new-moan-ya, and I couldn't get to the root of the nipples problem, if you'll pardon the image. They're not really, roots, right, they're lactation paths, or milk ducts. Little rivers that sprout vitamin drink - I think it's Odwalla - to tiny tikes. And the writing had utterly - udderly (how cheap, I cannot help myself) distracted me from my predicament. Which is, truly, that my sleep, my eating, my everything is quite depressed, despite the meds the therapy and the many supportive people around.

It's not the run-of-the-therapy-mill supports, though. It's the he-man psycho-pharm guy, Dr. Rugged. Every time I see him, I am better. He's so knowledgeable about drug interactions and all this type of fancy crap, and his venn diagrams are to die for. He has massive shoulders like he forgot to take his football pads out and I find it strangely comforting: the big man will say multi-syllable words and understand my little Jewish references, an added bonus. So I visualize Dr. Rugged, and instead of the blue or the yellow, I'm thinking the little cube shape. Blogozene! If you're one of the two people reading this, you may be on it. And it's doing the trick. The side-effects are a little OCD-ish, but what the hell. I can actually write on this stuff. I'm hallucinating a little, but it's mostly text, words like "comments," "feminism," and "links." The colors are quite intense, greens and purples for the most part. I've lost my appetite and my fingers are a little numb, but I think it's worth it for the distraction from non-text, non-screen life. I'm almost ready for nipples.

Blog Addict Confesses, Protests, and Possibly Misses Typos as a Result

Blogging is good. I have discovered some excellent blogs. I am forced to practice the art of writing, even if it is not the fiction and poetry that I am supposedly devoted to. I am reading, and that is excellent. But didja ever notice that every blog leads to another blog? And another? And in my world, it's not the high-minded blogs that I stick with - I already read the news in hard print, and I do appreciate those blogs. But when someone is weighing in on or commenting on movie stars, bad fashion, female problems, dumbass men, any type of bad taste, and/or lust, she has my attention. (As far as I know, I haven't yet met a male blogger outside of a comments page, I dunno why.)

Anyhoo, I have an excellent invitation to play dolls and I'm not wasting my goddamn time sucked into the computer and harping on about how fucked up those skating commentators are and how they have a million Olympics web pages but nowhere to write in and say you xenophobic pigs leave the Japanese women alone they were better than the Americans so live with it. Even Scott Hamilton was an arse. I gotta go play dolls, and as protest, I think some of them may be multicultural.

Rugelah, Fish, and Salad

Wait! What happens when people tell you you're funny and then you're not funny? Do you become your own mediocre sequel? What if you don't know you're being humorous - this happens to me a lot - and then someone tells you "you're so funny," and you're like oh, ha, ha - and then there is this expectation of you, so you try to actually tell a joke, and your teenager says "ya know, Mom, when you try to be funny, you're really not." It's like the daddy in Finding Nemo who tries clowning with those two fishy guys and he's fucking pathetic.

My daughter came home and in an eerie foreshadowing, or perhaps simple shadowing, of this dilemma, told me a story about a very nice girl in her class, Mabel. I happen to know the girl's mom is an uptight and wealthy withholding automaton, yet the girl's a sweet little thing. My daughter, Rugelah we'll call her, told me that Mabel's always saying how funny Rugelah is. Rugelah seemed to enjoy this, but she was also baffled: why does this kid think I'm funny when I'm just being me? I was wringing my hands internally: oh no it's a Jewish thing. It's a Lucy thing. My own warped DNA. What if she tries to tell a joke, along with all the other kids? She'll fall flat on her ass, just like her mom and Nemo's loser dad. Worse - worse - what about all those money-soaked suburbanites we chose to live amongst so we could leech their educations, covet their homes and their many bathrooms, and populate the area during the vacations when they go skiing? They may be among the not-laughing people, finally acknowledging the brutal line between filthy rich and middle class. They may wear Gap, but we wear Gap Clearance. They may have an inheritance, but all we have is a house and some food. The families in town find us quaint because we don't have a horse or a gate house. Ouch.

If Rugelah follows my decline into mediocrity, going from funny little friend to - oy vesmir - the girl who used to be funny, her classmates and pals may push her aside for another, funnier child. Maybe a distant cousin of Nora Ephron, or a Lily Tomlin wannabe? We will be cast aside, like so many old Groucho glasses. The cyber-neighbors will silently disappear, too, deleting Rugelah and me from their memory banks like so much spam. A pox on those lousy chicken jokes!

Well, there's nothing to be done, I tell ya. If I'm funny I'm funny; if little Rugelah's funny, she's funny. And if I'm not so comical, and she's not either, so be it. She's cute as a button, and once she's old enough, I'll set her up with a modeling agency, where people will truly understand her value. We'll go to the mall, eat salads, and get plucking. I still got my looks, too. So between us, the important stuff's covered. At least until my ass sags all the way behind my kneecaps. No way in hell could I cover that.

Love and Sweat at the Movies

Last night, Chrystal and I went to see Brokeback Mountain. We were wiry and heated, hypothesizing about the effect watching the film would have on us. We wondered how graphic it would be. My mother had said it didn't have all that much sex in it, but that it was a visually beautiful movie. Ha! The mountains must have blocked her view.

This week's New Yorker cover has a cartoon parody of Brokeback Mountain, along with virtually every other mainstream print and web media piece since its release, and subsequent innumerable recognitions. Many of the jokes are funny, but the movie itself is stunning. And Mom was right. It is visually beautiful. Not only the scenery and the silvery sheen of the sheep's backs, but the fine movements in Heath Ledger's sparse expressions. As Ennis, he transforms externally from a 20-year-old to a middle-aged man, but he maintains the same restraint, the fear of being exposed, in every line of his face. I searched his skin for movie make-up and his eyes for some giveaway, but he was undeniably Ennis Del Mar, and his wife a very pained ex. Jake Gyllenhaal as Jack Twist is all revved up, and I was with him, but he was emotional, expressive, and so a familiar character. I dunno what happened with Jack's wife, Anne Hathaway, of Princess Diaries fame, but her make-up was absurd, and I didn't believe her for a minute.

When Ennis and Jack push each other away and then get to each other when they can, it's a deceptively easy metaphor for any relationship. But it's also all about sex: the movie strengthens my original lust theory, the one I have held onto for years. No lust? Fuggetaboutit. When a friend tells me she's met someone and they have fun, but there's no chemistry, my response - if she wants it, okay, even if she doesn't want it - is give it up. You are wasting your time. One cannot maintain any sort of long-term, going-through-shit, hating-each-other, meeting-related-people-and-friends (some of whom you inevitably will not be crazy about), without a fundamental, biological I-wanna-rip-something-offa-you, or suck something, or get carnal somehow, that strings you together. Those urges may fade or hibernate, but if they're never ever there, I maintain that they will not show up, regardless of how much you care about each other.

This is why the movie is, yes, about love and passion and how fucked up it is that two men cannot love one another, but it is also about how integral the fucking and the physical and the taste is to the relationship. They can be best friends, and that's all sweet, but they need to be closer than that: they crave the skin-to-skin, the biological and natural urge to get under and into and around, to surpass the superficial and reach for the visceral.

So in the final analysis of what I guess is a movie review, I recommend you go see it so you can remember that true love is rare and it isn't all about a good fuck but it isn't all about a fucking table and chairs and a casserole, either.

The Case for Complaint

"No Crybabies." I saw this sign in the doorway of a chic retro-diner - or maybe it was on an American Express commercial. The expected reaction is oh, yeah, too true, I so agree. A colleague has a "no whining" sign on her wall, and as I eye it, nausea sets in. The sign may as well say "Lucy, get the hell outta here!" I like whining, it is an excellent hobby, and I don't mind telling you that I am rather good at it.

Who are these supposed adults who act like whining or crying or kvetching is too much for them because they are busy being cool and all put together? Does it mean that I am not supposed to be negative at all? Are we allowed to breathe? Is it like that New England saying "I can't complain?" I've got news: you can complain! If you just worked a 60 hour week, your back is killing you, and your kid has been suspended from school, you get to complain.

Why does a woman, to reverse Rex Harrison's asinine query, think she has to be more like a man? Don't get me wrong, I adored Rex in my formative years, despite his apish look and his absolutely loathsome behavior, I was as idiotic as the next girl, repressing my true lust for Audrey who was quite obviously the hottie in the picture. Nevertheless, one was manipulated to want Rex's attentions, to stop whining, to stand up straight, to act as though being thrown in the gutter and then utterly used and mistreated like so much upholstery were a flattery. I fell for it, too.

But no more. I will complain, proudly, and I find it utterly irritating and fundamentally cloying when women tell me they can't complain. What is it in them that cannot do it? My pat answer is 'sure you can.' Complaining is really giving a report that is less than positive. Must one always give a cheery run-down of the day even if it was goddawful? I can imagine Chrystal, my dear partner-in-crime: "why, Lucy, it was a wonderful sight! The older boy had smacked the younger boy, and I was yelling at full lung capacity! It was quite exhilarating."

How did this happen in our free and progressive culture? If a woman is healthy, then there is no reason to be bothered by anything. Your husband may be sleeping with your neighbor's husband's assistant, your dog ran away, you've just been fired, you're menstruating buckets, but you're healthy. So don't complain. No crybabies. And if a day comes when you are not healthy, tell everyone "it could be worse," or "at least the vomiting stopped after 3 days - I heard some people went for five." A cheery colleague will knock on wood and shrug.

Thus I now endeavor to practice what I preach: I don't have enough money to do what I want and I want to quit working five days a week (whose dumbass idea was that); I have too much fucking housework to do and I would like a magic fairy to do it for me; it's cold out and I do not ski and my winter coat looks like a bad mushroom; my cough won't go away and it chokes me just as my nagging is starting to roll; school vacation is too short; my hair takes forever to dry so then I am even colder; I want someone to come take care of me but I keep having to do it my own self; I want a new pair of pants and I cannot find them; I don't have a good book to read and I am overwhelmed by all of the blogs in the blogworld; our country's being run by a puppet with a bald old dick for a puppeteer; I wanna be a rock star and I am totally not; I still get zits and I'm in my forties, and the one I messed with now looks like a bruise on my left cheek; no one cards me anymore, and waitresses are flummoxed by the small request to keep the goddamn ice outta my tequila.

And, sadly, I am not Audrey Hepburn. Oh, the poise, the hair, the talent. Alas, I am sure she did not complain - not Audrey - so I will resign myself to being more in line with the aptly named Lucy and her pal Ethel, perhaps, or the creepy little nudge in Lord of The Rings, going ga-ga over his precious bit of gold. He may not have been good-looking or particularly friendly, but that troll knew how to whine.

Bad Apples

The aptly named Dick Cheney shot a guy by accident and the guy is in the ICU and it's all so casual because they're hunting chums and this is how our government looks at guns and injury and mistakes and it is all a metaphor for the dead-for-no-reason people in Iraq - and here - who they pretend were part of a war when actually it was all PR after the bombing of the World Trade Center and they didn't know what the hell to do so we have dead people and it is all masked but they are Arab or working class or poor or black so who the hell cares and why even talk about it when we could be shaking hands in the Rose Garden or having meetings at big desks or making more money from someone somewhere? I do not care about the Un-witting Whittington who went a-hunting but I do care about all of the holy places, the buildings, the neighborhoods and the people all over everywhere that our government crushes on a whim without giving us the slightest notion of what's going on and the media hides what the government would like them to hide and if you think this is a conspiracy theory forget it I'm talking about all the dead people who didn't die of old age or accident or disease, as awful as those are, but they died of deliberate Bush/Cheney stupidity, hubris, and criminal behavior. There is no apple pie.

Gimme

I was planning on writing about Valentine's Day because I was gonna pretend that I got a ruby bracelet. I would create a morality tale about the epiphany that I am superficial. Then I had a true revelation. Forget the goddamn morality thing. I would like the ruby bracelet. I imagine a gold clasp. I want an inscription, too. A word both cryptic and eclectic. None of this forever crap. How's about more or insane or vulva? Something catchy.

I am not getting a ruby bracelet. Don't get all indignant about how spoiled I am, how mainstream and regressive, complaining about a ruby bracelet. I'm hot for rubies. My students give me little notes from home in envelopes, and I say "ooh, finally, my ruby earrings." Why not? Am I supposed to settle, on this, the holy day of women-chained-to-men getting good crap, for some perfumed lace? Do I willingly ignore the gems I see on other women's fingers, as I do every other day of the year? I would accept any ruby, but I need a bracelet. It could represent all of my hypocrisy, so that when my teenager hurls that word at me, I'll say "I know! Isn't it a beauty?" Hypocrisy - the perfect inscription!

My friends would look at it and wait for me to tell them at which used clothing store I picked it up. And I'd chuckle to myself and shake my head slowly. "Oh no, Ball & Chain had to take out a loan." Their eyes would light up with admiration, and they would beg to hear how much it cost. When he purchased her engagement chunk, my grandmother had my grandfather admirably bow to her will. He bought her a diamond. When he showed it to her, she laughed heartily at its miniscule size. They went back to the jeweler's together, and she chose an absolute planet of diamond: it's so heavy it lolls to one side on my mother's finger. My grandfather had to borrow money to pay for it. Now that woman had ovaries.

Contemporary marriage is fucked up. If I ever rejected an item of jewelry, it would be cause for much stewing. And when I insisted it was too small, I hardly think I'd get a friendly response. Who's the boss over here if I can't even get some pricey stuff in the deal? One time I gushed over a lapis lazuli fish that B&C presented to me outside a shop. A year later, back in the same shop, I saw the fish - and a hundred others - in a glass jar for $2.95 My grandmother would be ashamed.

I'm currently reading Maus by Art Spiegelman. So if you can figure out how a Jewish girl can read about her ancestors starving and suffering, and then blog about gem deprivation, write in with a diagnosis. I think it's ASD/MA, or Appallingly Shallow Disorder, with Materialism Anxiety. If you check out the DSM IV (Psychological Diagnostic Tool), I meet all the criteria, including "believes material goods will genuinely create feelings of well-being." Oh, come on! Doesn't everybody?

Back to some light reading.

Dracula, Dresses & The Lifestyle to Which I am Accustomed

I have had the opportunity to watch a lot of television. I have had the opportunity to look at a lot of people in a lot of bad dresses. It's a bit of a blur since I was doing the recuperation thing, but some of the dresses were like alarm clocks, causing me to rise up from the couch, and cough a lot. I suppose that's the intention. I like how they say 'Nicole is wearing Eve,' to refer to a designer, as if there is an actual person draped over the celebrity. We could also drape a celebrity over another celebrity. I'd like to see one of the super-skinny ones, maybe Calista Flockhart, although I really have no idea what she does now (I know who she does, but that's different), draped over a genuine beauty with a female figure - Queen Latifah, for example - like a stoll around her neck. Queen Latifah would be in her glory, and when she took Calista off, she could just drape her over her chair.

Dontcha just adore a great dress? On my 35th birthday I thrifted a stunning red vintage piece that was velvet and snug and silk - off my shoulders. The little darts were too high for my tits, but I kinda nudged them up and no one seemed to notice. I inhaled the attention like so many chocolate-covered cherries: easily, graciously. "Thank you," I smiled. Internally, of course, I was cramming it in like a Big Mac after 3 weeks on the island. Yes, I am still hot. Yes, I am a beauty. Yes, I am still about as superficial as they come. And the most important: can I really sit down in this thing without busting the back zipper?

How politically abhorrent, you say! I thought this woman was a feminist, or at least progressive. I am, I am, but I gotta be me. An entire childhood of adult appraisal regarding one's face does not create a balanced self-image. This is not to say it was hard, but merely to say it is the lifestyle to which I was accustomed. And most days I can only accustom myself up to good-enough-to-present- one's-self-at-work. Going out at night, however, draws the vanity back in, as if Dracula vamps a bite as the sun sets and I am re-obsessed with the face and the dress.

The ball and chain, well, he does not accommodate. At all. Why, it's as if he married me with a blindfold on. In fact, at the above-mentioned party, another man had to tell him to tell me that I looked good. I may have complained about this before. Nevertheless, Ball & Chain is a fool, a withholding manipulator, and I think he should tell me how pretty I am.

But back to the dresses. Teri Hatcher was wearing something akin to Fleetwood Mac's early days, and Madonna is now attempting to out-bizarre Michael Jackson. I can't see her face. I can see something, but the components don't match. I cannot recognize Susan, and I wouldn't seek her, desperately or otherwise. There were some others, and if you visit Go Fug Yourself, you will see the fugliest there, plus have a good laugh.

Perhaps I should go write some journal entries about my warped self-image. No, I think other people can judge me for my warped self-image. I'm going to go buy valentines, and perhaps some chocolate-covered cherries.

Supreme Reproduction

I haven't mentioned politics much because politics make me crazy. Not because I cannot make up my mind but because when I listen and when I read it all becomes one unscientific morass of how could this possibly be happening? Do we really have to find out whether a man supports my right to have an abortion before he sits on the Supreme Court? I know I have a goddamn right to an abortion. Why the hell do I have to listen to this idiocy over and over? Must I pretend that there is another side? Is Mr. Alito gonna come on over here and give me my next pap smear? Maybe he could like be my rabbi or something, or my lesbian partner.

I hear and read many intelligent people critiquing this and other subjects. Yet - and this is not some tirade about why I don't vote because I do, or why I don't do anything, because I do - I am hard-pressed to stick with a conversation about his swimmer and my egg and the future of the resulting zygote. The tiny little doober is inside me, get it? I feel that if George Bush does not want me to have an abortion he does not have to perform the procedure. I wasn't planning on inviting him, anyway.

Do we ask nominees how they feel about male circumcision? How about peeing standing up vs. sitting down? Vasectomy? Testicular abnormalities? Premature ejaculation? Impotence? Do you notice how none of these are very good analogies? Maybe I'm irresponsible when, after a few minutes, I cannot bear wasting time listening to the governmental preoccupation, no, obsession with my uterus, when they should be protecting all the babies who are already here. I'll bet there are even babies in Iraq, and other strange countries like that.

Perhaps I was too hasty about that invitation to George W. If I decide to have a third baby, I'm inviting the Supremes and George (not Laura, she's too busy advancing literacy) and they can watch my whole genital area puff up like a basketball, my labia inflate into man-eating suckers, the blood and the mucus all over the head, and the blobby baby in all of his of her veiny glory. Before they can sing Hallelujah! I'll give birth to the placenta. George will have brought an old Maine lobster pot, and I'm sure Ruth wouldn't mind supplying the Dansk bowls. Mmmm... placenta stew. And sweat pouring off me, my protectors gathered around, I'll be like, "Hey Rose, Guys, what do you think I should do with my baby?"

I'm just grateful they'll be there to help.

The Artless and The Unchanged

If Hazel is sick in bed does she hafta get dressed? Does she hafta change her pajamas? Her underwear? I rather enjoy letting the clothing warm to the body temperature and then remaining in said night clothing for the length of time one is sick or until warm underwear becomes blotchy with female fluids and such at which point one may want to remove the underwear and put the same cozy pajamas back on.

Fear not! If you have read about the hypertonic pelvic floor, Hazel is not bothered by that currently - it has become regular tonic, or maybe gin & tonic, but not hypertonic. Thus, the underwear is dry, toasty, and unchanged for days. Oh, admit it, you do it too!

Why refer to Hazel rather than myself? Well, I went to type this post and the image of Hazel in her apron outside the little house came to me. She was bold, so 'out there' about all kinds of taboo issues. You know when she went out at night, she took off the uniform and wore only the apron? If only. Hazel was a television maid, of course, beloved to all: white skin, quacky voice, red hair, stout posture. She loved her little family and needed nothing more than to make them happy. Kinda like the tree in Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree. No! I am not going to link to Amazon.com here. Find it yourself. Hazel was happy to be a stump and let her family take the apples, the branches, the wood. She'd just watch and shake her head happily.

So Hazel's watching the world go by, except this Hazel's contemporary, wearing dirty underwear, reading, and watching bad t.v. And not giving a goddamn thing. I did watch t.v. yesterday - what a mistake. I think it made me sicker seeing Vicky doing her split personality again. Honestly, I have been watching bad t.v. my whole life: Ryan's Hope, All My Children, One Life to Live, Room 222, The Partridge Family, Family (Kristy McNichol), H.R. Puffinstuff, and other varied horrors. Twenty five years I've been watching a bad actress pretend to have multiple personalities. Every time I have been utterly embarrassed for her, yet riveted to her ability to continue, unabashed.

They useta have a commercial in which a reporter-type would knock on someone's door and ask when a housewife had last changed her Arm & Hammer Baking Soda. "Last June," said one. "Thanksgiving?" asked the second. And the third shrunk her face up. "Was I supposed to change it?" My friend from across the street switched the question to "When was the last time you changed your underwear?" Thirty years later, I dare to ask the same question, but slightly edited. Last time you were sick in bed, how many days did you go without changing your underwear? Hazel is heading for a record at 4 days. In this endeavor, I follow Vicky's lead: unabashed, but also unwashed.

A Cute New Moan Yaa

Didja ever wonder how ya got yerself into the position of having two kids, a husband with a broken foot, and a chest that feels like an ogre's foot is resting atop, not-so-lightly? The Nice Nurse Lady said to take it very seriously - this is my first day sitting up at all - and then she said I could go back to work Wednesday! (It was Friday afternoon.) I'm not sure how nice she is. "They used to hospitalize people for this," she told me. But now there are strong medicines, with names like floxamoxatoxapox. Whatever happened to 'spend two weeks in bed?'

My friends are very excellent because they get me stuff like food and they call me and they bring dinner. Chrystal actually took dictation so I could send the appropriate notes into work. I have two bobbing heads in my brain, like in those old cartoons, with good and evil, only these are both slightly malevolent. Left shoulder: above-mentioned Nurse Lady, apparently sweet but sending me back to work strangely early, as she tells me that I won't fully recuperate for weeks. She speaks out of a lipsticked little mouth, on a teeny-tiny face, in front of a tiny head, atop a big bosom like some of my old aunts. Maybe she is actually a character from an indie film? The other head is my boss, a go-get-'em Irish broad who told me recently that my work is not quite what it was in the fall. Her message upon hearing of the new-moan-aaa, "I hope you feel better, and thanks for keeping me up to date," obviously meant 'get your ass in here.' Hello? I'm Jewish and my family adheres religiously to the stereotype: 'stay in bed;' 'I'd visit, but I don't want to catch anything;' 'What's the name of the antibiotic?'

Anyway, why work for people who really give a shit about what you're doing? Can I just be mediocre?

I did bathe today and that was a big effort and this is a big effort and I feel like total crap. Waaa.