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.