Hold You

I spent this past week caring for our designated baby so his parents could get away for a few days and kick up their heels some. He’s a darling child still young enough so he's never had a haircut and can’t yet say his S’s and, when the chips are down, just walks over to you and holds up his  arms to be carried.Those arms went up a lot during our four days together which was a challenge since I’m not accustomed to the fast-twitch muscle, clean-and -jerk maneuver necessary to lift him straight into the air, tote him out to the car and back again after our outings, much less trudge up four flights of stairs to get to the little slope-ceilinged attic room where we’ve set up his crib.“We just have to be really careful so we don’t fall” I said to him once, willing myself steady. “I hold you TT,” he said back, placing his  little starfish hand on my chest. As if that would keep us safe. As if the hand of one born in 2007 could ever ward off the fate awaiting one born in the 1940s.Still, I loved the sentiment, which more than made up for the fact that by the end of our time together I was so exhausted I caught myself pouring salad dressing into my coffee.Finally, at 5:30 Friday night, his parents came back and by 6:00 David and were driving the hundred miles north to our New Hampshire cottage, the only place I could think of where I might possibly be able to make the quick recovery I'd need to make to face the work-week now quickly approaching. It started to snow around Concord.  Three miles from our driveway a car 100 yards in front of us shot off the road and overturned. “Look at that, look at that!” shouted David, normally the calmest person on the planet. “Call 911!” he yelled, gripping the wheel so we wouldn’t also fly off the road.Within two minutes four emergency vehicles had arrived. Within 30 minutes we were huddled under the covers in our freezing cottage, cold but safe. The driver of that other car lying upside-down in the snow had a different fate and all I could think was, who held that poor soul in those darkest moments? Who in that person’s life suddenly startled into alertness knowing just knowing, that something awful had happened?

Blue Moon

We’re having a blue moon tonight, and we won’t have another one on New Year’s Eve until 2028 when I’ll be picking up some extra cash doing Wilfred Brimley impersonations at the local mall.That’s the sin of it all right, the way we girls all talk ourselves down. I went to the beach and the pool at 15 and 19 and 22 and counted myself round, homely, altogether unlovable… Now I  look back at the pictures of myself in those days with my shiny dark hair and skin all smooth and that rounded cheek of youth that Meg Ryan will never get back no matter how much plastic surgery she has (and if God made a more adorable young woman I’d like to know who she is.)What a waste not to know when you have it good! How blind and foolish and altogether human.Look at Meg back in the days of When  Harry Met Sally Days  up top here.Now look at her today.Some say her mouth looks like the Joker's. she definitely let them fiddle with it.Now if you dare check her out at the beach just a few days ago. I may be embarrassed by the jutting mantelpiece I 've been carrying around since age 12 and now I won't show my bare arms to anyone but my doctor and not even my doctor  come to think of it but look what happens when you lose TOO much weight and the lathe shows right through the plaster. Poor Meg all ribs and a sternum. Poor all of us, so much fruit slowly softening in the bowl.

Climb In It's Freezing

Gonna be COLD again today, so cold your tongue is gonna  freeze clear through when it touches your fillings.Lucky for me I got a jacket for Christmas that is brown and toasty and looks a lot like fur. In the old days if a lady had a fur she told the world; she wore the whole carcass right around her neck. Remember the little dead heads dangling down from ladies' throats in the old days? those ladies were PROUD ! Our mum could never pull off the snob thing herself. When she finally did inherit an old fur it was a mink-dyed muskrat which she made the mistake of saying once in front of us kids. From then on that’s all anybody called it.I also have a black jacket that might or might not be fur and - wait, is that a can of paint you're holding behind your back? - but since I mostly wear  brown these days, to go with my dye-job, Old Dave gave me this new one.Anyway here are the two jackets on my kitchen stairs the other night warming two younger members of my gene pool who had the nerve to call me “Carmela,”  as in Soprano, on account of this new gift. (I cut their heads off for revenge.  But tell ya what, when people are cold and they spot a piece of outerwear as toasty and lightweight as EITHER a mink-dyed muskrat OR a Gee-Beav-What-a-Nice-Shade-of-Brown, they don’t even put down their beers before climbing on in themselves!)

Dream Big Today

Christmas Eve and the lady working the counter at Home Goods tells me they haven’t seen any drop-off in sales at all since the downturn and, I mean, obviously, right? Because where else can you find peek-a-boo cutaway nighties made in Thailand AND a boxed set of bar tools that'll pop out every kind of cork known to man including your own bellybutton?As I stood waiting for her to ring up my stuff I noticed  the shopper beside me pull out of her own her cart a massive space-age-style wall hanging made out of super-shiny orange and green wiffle-ball looking things welded together with 50 yards of plastic pipe.“Oh God! it’s cheesy isn’t it?” she blurted when she caught me looking.“No! It’s actually kind of awesome  – unless.... it’s not for your twenty-something son arriving home tonight from Brooklyn is it?”“Hah! No I'm afraid to buy him anything these days I get it wrong so often.No, this is for me,”  she added, looking shyly down at the thing.She didn’t even ask how I knew about her son.You take a couple of weary mums and they can most times see clear down into the other one’s life.

Anyway, I hope you guys out there can also dream on a grand scale so that Santa will also get you something that lifts you clear off the ground like the lady in this picture. (I was foolish when it was my turn at the Mall.  I just asked for this old looseleaf notebook and some Styrofoam full of greasy takeout.

Fallen Angel

TREE STRADDLERS BEWARE!

The following just captured by your crew here at Inside Addition: Grave News Today as Christmas Tree Angel Clings to Life, Dignity.

Proctologists Agree: Don't Try This at Home (Click here for the backstory.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaHYiHnjVGY]

Tough Jobs: Tree Angels and Santas

Well I made a video about Christmas at the mall. How could I not when I’d just been there and seen dogs sitting in Santa’s lap; when I'd just seen a 20-something pick up a DVD and say to her mom by the checkout, “Look we can give this to Dad!” It was a DVD called "Wolves." Poor guy. Some dumb science documentary. Dads get the short end of every stick that’s out there.A fella was here today to repair our counter-top. “I find you might as well just do whatever your wife tells you to do immediately,” he said at one point. “That’s exactly what my husband says to all younger guys. ‘Just do what they want and your life will be a lot easier.” Who died and left US queen? Note to self: don’t TOTALLY abuse the power.But this is not a posting about marriage; it’s a posting about Christmas and here it is: my first foray into the land of the Flip Video:[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Xd68sy7pQ]

One Good Death

My mom died on December 20th. It was a Sunday like this and snowy like today.  She died at her own birthday party in my living room.It was a long time ago I guess. in 1987  I was a baby practically, a mere 38 with my dark-haired husband and our babies sleeping sweetly in their beds. I was still letting her do all the worrying a mile away in her little room at The Mt  Vernon House where she radicalized all the old ladies with talk about how they should have been given SOCIAL SECURITY for the years of homemaking!  (I loved how she could be really steamed up about something,  yet funny about it at the same time; mad and yet comical.)She died wearing a bright-blue top I had bought for her for the big occasion. The EMT’s ripped it open to get at her heart and the nurses in the ER cut her bra right in two. It did no good of course. I'm pretty sure she  was dead  before my cousin and my sister-in-law even got her onto the floor for the CPR.This at the top is how she looked at age 39, newly married and six months pregnant with the baby she thought she'd never have. This picture down below I took when she was in her casket and that baby - my big sister Nan -  was praying beside her.Every year on December 2o^th I wear the bright-blue top with its three new buttons over the heart. I’m wearing it now and thinking  Mom, oh Mom, oh mother of ours, that was one good death.

Sneakin' It In

It’s a big day for all of us in the northeast corridor with mad wind and snow due in. It's not supposed to start here ‘til tonight so everyone's all rushing around trying to sneak in just ONE MORE trip to the novelty store for nuns in boxing gloves and such.This is my girl Annie sneakin’ out of  line at the I-Max to score some popcorn. And speaking of all this sneaking maybe we should all just forget our lists and go see  Avatar today, though you’d think a guy who made Titanic which I know I never get sick of seeing (when the ship finally hikes up her hips and knifes straight down into the cold North Atlantic, ah!) You’d think a guy like that could figure out how to make the characters look a little more ….lovable. And I know, I know. I heard him say on late-night TV that Neytriri and her boyfriend Tsu'Tey have "smokin' hot bods" (James, you nerd) but what’s with the way their faces look like they were never quite joined in utero? That’ll take some getting used to! Plus sitting on your fanny for two hours and 46 minutes? Not me. Not today anyway. Sometimes I’m actually glad God made me a little manic, I get an awful lot done Now let’s go punch some nuns.

Flashers Beware

Woo! So cold the flashers are describing themselves today and what did I do but lose my nice old strangling gloves fine as a second skin which I wear from October to April in these chilly climes.  Gonna be plenty cold the next few days with that wind out of Canada and here we are all are rushing to and for when we should be home under the covers with a warm dog. (Contest Question One: Name that singing group.) And here’s another question for ya and a wonderfully ugly Christmas tree ornament from my special collection of What Was I Thinking Seasonal Ornaments to any and all who get it right. What is THIS a picture of below? (Hint: I took it three hours ago out in my driveway.) undoctored photo too!

Guilty

Mea culpa: That’s part of the old Catholic  prayer called The Confiteor in which you ask for pardon for all the bad things you did this week. Anyone remember the old-school sacrament of Penance and all that sweating-it-out we once did in the Confessional? As a little child my poor mom once offered up the fact that she had torn the wallpaper as her big sin. “DON’T WASTE THE PRIEST’S TIME” came the icy voice from the behind the darkened screen, shaming the girl even more.I can tell you I never wasted the priest’s time and if this were a less family-oriented blog I’d tell you the terrible follow-up question a priest once asked me when I admitted to having impure thoughts. (That was the umbrella term you’d use for mortal sins like French kissing or Kissing For More Than Five Minutes which no word of a lie were actually capable of sending you to Hell and I can tell you they were about as 'mortal' as we got since there was no birth control back then. Plus we all wanted to get in to Heaven or at least that’s all I wanted: To get in to Heaven and to college, preferably with a  scholarship to each.)But here’s the really bad thing I did, I who am always semi-whining about the time I spend caring for Uncle Ed even though I love him. I get a little sore see because he sometimes tries to guilt people. For example my kid in Brooklyn asked him on Thanksgiving what he did for his birthday the week before. “I was all alone,” Uncle sadly intoned. “Nobody called. Nobody came.”  Whaaaat? Hadn’t I organized a visit by no fewer then seven people that day, plus didn't I send him something  AND call AND write an early-morning email before showing up with the all these family members who brought flowers and gifts and food and two sweet little children to delight him?  It really ticked me off, his saying this - until whoops! The realization came just the other day when the pharmacy kept not finding him in their records by his date of birth as I recited it. The sad truth? After 40 years knowing the man, after being his closest friend and the executor of his very will I still, after 42 years, get his birthday a little wrong. I showed up with that caravan of family members the Day AFTER his 89^th birthday, so he really did spend the day all alone! Mea Culpa is right!

Skinny Syndrome

7:00 am:Weatherman says snow and wind and end-of the-world rain due today. Been watchin’ the school systems marching past on the crawl line of the local news here and wait: The Pincushion School? What is that, a place devoted to instruction in the dark art of voodoo?Speaking of voodoo how many times have we all wished we could stick pins in gorgeously thin people and hit ‘em where it hurts, like right in those tiny waistlines say? Thinkin’ of thin here and wondering if my Weight Watchers meeting will still be on. (I go to the local Senior Center for my meetings because those cheery older ladies have such a sense of fun and perspective. Everyone laughs the whole time and last week we made fun of our husbands it's great.) And OK yes I've ost only half a pound in since I joined in April but hey: at least’s I haven’t gained. And when I look at the National Enquirer I feel almost glad. Tori Spelling with her long face like a horse’s faces and ribs all down her back? Ahslee Simpson like one of those big-eyed  Keane kids? Courtney Love, who used to be all curves and pouts?  Just look  at her here! Five-ten and 111 lbs.  She looks like a kitchen witch. Worse!I’m five-six. When I got married I weighed 130 but by the time my last baby was born I was down to 115 so I know: once you start losing weight it sort of IS hard to stop and I was eating normally, but maybe they all say that. Maybe Courtney and Ashlee and Tori think they’re eating normally too but you just know they aren’t. Bad as Courtney looks check out these two pictures below. See the breasts this one woman doesn’t have? I mean you can see why they didn't bother to  hide them with black rectangles.  See the hollows in the sides of this other woman’s pelvis?  Those hollows are designed to cradle the great muscles that keep us upright and allow us to lift our legs and bend and move around some. Without them what can you do but lie on the couch? And PS the heart is a muscle too which is why you die. It’s a cautionary tale, guys. Humans are seriously prone to crazy and you and I are no exception. Now go find that shovel but for God's sake eat something first!

This  young woman on the right got lucky; she recovered

Must Liquidate

Hell of a week, starting when someone just out of oral surgery reached into his mouth and handed me a virtual blood sponge of bright-red gauze and ending when my poor cat Abe’s tidy bottom, so nicely sealed under ordinary circumstances, experienced a horrible change such that every room in my house was graced with small ‘deposits.’ Every room, plus an upholstered wing chair, a damask settee and the comforter in my very bedroom. IN MY BEDROOM WHERE MY WIFE SLEEPS!  WHERE MY CHILDREN COME AND PLAY WITH THEIR TOYS! (ha ha, no that’s Al Pacino in Godfather II.)In a word Abe had ‘anal leakage,’ a phrase that makes me smile in spite of all the scrubbing I’ve done because it reminds me of Lay’s 1998 launch of the ill-fated Wow! Potato Chips.  “Now! Made with Olestra!” the large writing on the front of the bag said, Olestra being a magic substance that does sort of taste like the yummy animal fat we’re hard-wired to love but does not actually stay in the body if you get my drift. The part I loved best about Wow! was the frank label on the side that said “Can Cause Anal Leakage" - which is just what it did and all those ravenous Americans who could never in a million years eat just one serving of anything were suddenly ‘caught short,’ as they used to say, keeping more than the customary 18-inches of space around themselves and declining all invitations to undress in front of an audience.Poor Abe,it seems is prone to constipation. Out of the blue there was this wild but unproductive straining, then a nasty loss-of-appetite-plus-throwing up combo, then the sudden trip to the vet's for not one but two enemas followed by a scene very much like the one where Billy Crystal delivers the baby horse in City Slickers. When they were done with all these ministrations those good souls gave him a bath (don’t ask) and offered to keep him for several hours more in case there was additional ‘drainage’ - and as I have said  there was drainage all right; hence my new role as royal mopper-upper.But enough on this queasy topic! Parting advice: get plenty of roughage. Parting ad: Two Fine Pieces of Upholstered Furniture for Sale - Best Offer - Must Liquidate.

Head Surgery: You'll Feel Some PRESSURE!!

The more I learn about dentistry the more I wish it were the 1850s. I mean how cool would it be to have an actual blacksmith working on your mouth, preferably a sweaty one in a leather apron? That’s who pulled teeth in many towns. They they were strong and they had the tools. all kinds of people pulled teeth it seems: Barbers. The odd lawyer. Silversmiths like Paul Revere too maybe. Anyway he made the fake teeth. That’s how they identified poor dead  Joseph Warren after the Battle of Bunker Hill: he had Paulie’s teeth in his mouth.An hour in the future I’m taking my husband’s 89-year-old uncle to have a tooth extracted and a gorgeous fake tooth stuck in. An hour in the past our little grandbaby went under the knife so these hot-shot Boston doctors at Children’s Hospital could simultaneously (a) put a pair of magical infection-preventing tubes in his ears and (b) clip out his adenoids so he can breathe better at night. At the moment this sweet child breathes like Darth Vader while sleeping, with many stops and starts. The picture at the top isn’t of his mouth of course but it’s pretty cool anyway.OK so when are his  parents  going to call to say he’s ok?  I’m grinding my OWN teeth here!

Thoughts for the Day

Thoughts For the Day: Turns out I don’t like turkey all that much. (I know: how many of us feel that way today right?) ALSO I am so glad  I didn’t have to cook again this year. Ever since our younger daughter Annie went to culinary school we’ve had a pretty easy time of it on the holidays. AND NOW all that’s left is the ride home, since, like a zillion other Americans, I too face a commute to get back to my workday life. I’m riding with our older daughter Carrie and the two little boys five and two, along with our old gray cat Abe who will sing like Luciano Pavarotti himself for the whole hundred-mile drive if I make him sit in the dread carrier, which is actually an entire rabbit hutch with a doggy bed inside it that I patched together out of pure mother-love and because I am a saint. To Abe though it’s prison pure and simple and for there to peace in the car at all I'll have to hold him in my lap while he drives his daggery nails into my thighs . I'll also probably have to sit in back between the two kiddie car seats because how can I sit in front with my back to those two cuties? This means that like the last time we drove with me in the middle they'll probably reach their little fingers inside the armholes of my shirt and shake hands with each other someplace in the vicinity of that cute little bow on my Bali bra.The Old Ball 'n Chain, meanwhile, will burn brush 'til it gets dark then drive home in a car free of molestation-by-mammals and we'll converge there at around 6 when - what else? we'll all go out for burgers before putting our youngest, Mike. on the train to NYC. Yay  family life!

It Does Make You Ponder

a 'bed' aboard the Mayflower II

You and I spent the day in a warm place with full tummies. Be glad. When those poor voyagers landed in the New World they smelled to high heaven and no wonder. The inside of the Mayflower was so tiny you wouldn’t try putting 120 people in there for an hour never mind two months.  One person died on the way over possibly because  of the food,  “The bread musty and mouldy, the  beefe and porke of such a loathsome and filthy taste”  that people “were constrained to stop their noses” to get it down. Liquids would have helped there but “the beer was sharp and sour and the water corrupt and stinking” enough so that the only way they could get that down was to mix it with wine - which had to also taste terrible.You and I ate pretty good today and now we get to crawl into our nice little beds.Here’s the typical bed in the Plimoth of 1620. (Note firewood stacked under it.)and here’s what they had for insulation:

It was December when they got here and within a year fully half their number would be dead. Not the cheeriest note to end on but it does make you ponder.11:23 on a Thanksgiving night in the first decade of the new Millenium. Rain and a touch of snow comin’ in. Peace in this house and a sweet old cat beside me. I know I feel grateful.

Just Sayin'

Just sayin': if I were an indigenous person I'd be rolling  my eyes heavenward and getting mad all over again about the wrong-headed versions of what went down in the fall of 1621. Also, check this out: Half the people who came over on the Mayflower died within the first year. 'Course ALL the people who lived in the settlement called Patuxet died a few years before that - of the Plague brought over by You-Know-Who, the Big-eyed, Big-nosed White Man as the Chinese once called our enlightened emissaries to the Eastern kingdoms.Squanto (real name Tisquantum ) was kidnapped by the English in 1614 and by the time he made his way back seven years later it was to find his whole village wiped out by this  plague and full of people from England and Holland.I learned all this visiting this amazing place Plimoth Plantation which I wrote about in this week's column - and by the way kudos to the historical impersonators like this lad, and this young woman.The people to really see? the actual Wampanoags who are good enough to share their time explaining the ancient arts.

Will That Be Brunch or a Broken Neck Today?

Uh oh, mouse tracks everywhere today! Time to get out the traps, using my new method that works every time (as you can see from this photo.) It involves affixing to the trap’s mechanism a bit of string nicely smeared with peanut butter: the old Bait and Switch at its finest. Will that be a bit brunch or a broken neck today? I hate thinking about it.Time was, our two cats covered the whole Wild Kingdom beat around here and invading critters got away with nothing, not even the bats who drop down the chimney from time to time. Once, when our boy-cat Abe came down from his nap and saw a bat swooping and dipping around in the kitchen his face said “Damn!” and quick as a wink he was six rooms away. The girl-cat Charlotte had another reaction: she sauntered into the room, caught what was happening, shot one deadly mitt in the air and  - POW! - felled the thing mid-flight.Charlotte is hunting on that Far Shore now and Abe is pleading old age so it’s back to man-made contraptions for us these days. Maybe one day we can all live peaceably together like the three pals in this You Tube video but it won’t be in MY house, at least not until we can teach mice about potty-training!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuO-D4_tCoo]

Build Grow Move Build Grow Move

Reunions Magazine has just quoted part of a column I wrote about a mini-reunion with my college pals. Only thing is they have me down as a columnist for the Norwich (CT) Bulletin whereas in fact I am a Columnist for the World in the sense that my little words go far and wide, which is a great source of satisfaction for me even if there’s no money in it. (350 papers in Massachusetts alone have access to my column and many of them use it. My compensation? $15 a week.)But never mind that. Here’s what the Reunions issue labeled November/ December/January 2010 quoted from that piece. It was kind of the big finish:

And in the end this reunion seemed to be just what any school reunion should be: a field trip of the imagination to the time when we would gather in small groups to joke and commiserate and tell fond semi-mocking stories about our families, who turned out not to seem so crazy after all when compared to other people’s families; to a time before we were tied in tight to this world by the cords of love and obligation; to a time when we believed – really believed – that Time would never touch us.

Ah but Time touched us all right. Time turned us and turned us, forcing us to grow as the chambered nautilus grows. That little creature inhabits one ‘room’ of his delicate shell, grows, builds a new, larger room, moves into it, grows, builds a new, larger room, moves into that, etc. until he has that lovely circular condo whose image we see on all the exercise equipment. (I bet on some level you also know the poem about this creature by the famous Oliver Wendell Holmes if you’ll just reach back far enough in memory. “Build more stately mansions O my soul!” etc., remember? The whole thing is here, if you want to have a look.You’ll also see the nautilus's shape in this picture I took of the stairs inside the lighthouse at Pemaquid Point in Maine which we visited during our three days together. We hiked clear to the top, clambered up into the place where the beacon is and clambered down again. These were once my best friends in the world, Vicki and Cathy and Elizabeth, Virginia, Susan and Judy and in many ways they still are that. A seventh pal, called Lynne, couldn’t make it this time but I think of  her every day – not just because she was and still is  so  beautiful but because she taught me by example that even if you feel all sad and weird you can still by God get up off your fanny and do your work. (Lynne at an earlier mini-reunion on Rattlesnake Hill, NH. For more on that experience go to Elizabeth's website here)

Just Plain Nuts

She’s great for even more reasons, this primary care doc I talked about the other day. During my annual check-up last week I told her I thought I was losing it a couple of months ago. A guy I met at the plant store told me he had ADHD and by golly he suffered my same symptoms. He didn’t find out 'til he was almost 50 he said but now with the right meds he feels focused with a wonderful time-release calmness.I sure wasn't calm anymore, OR focused. I who since the age of 15 have eaten an early breakfast and taken my time making a beautiful daily list and writing cryptic amusing entries in my diary. Suddenly I couldn't sit to those tasks, and often didn’t have a bite of breakfast until 11 in the morning, which may be normal for most people but sure isn’t normal for me. I read a checklist that helps you see if you have attention deficit/ hyperactivity: “Do you veer into people?” was one question. “Do you leave cabinet doors open?” I asked David if I did either of these things and he gave me deadpan look, gestured at our own yawning cabinets in mock horror and said,“ AND, you've been veering into me for 40 years.”So I got the referral for the Psychiatric department at Mass. General and went to see someone who after 40 minutes ruled out ADHD and said, right to my face,   “I think you’re depressed.”"WHY would I be depressed?”“Because your kids are gone.”“They’ve been gone since 2002! ““Still.” she said and gave me a second appointment which I ended up having to cancel. And now in the closing minutes of my annual checkup with my awesome Primary Care Doc it occurred to me to mention all this. After listening carefully she put down her pen and said something I wasn't expecting to hear: “I think you ARE depressed.”Again!  "Why do YOU say that?"“You just told me that you’ve lost twelve newspapers that used to subscribe to your column and that many of the rest can’t pay you.”“Well that’s true.”“And you’re not sad about that?”There was a shocked pause on my part. Then, “I’m really sad about, that though I never talk about it with anyone! I feel terrible. All these years I’ve never made a profit and now I feel like I’m ....disappearing! I feel like all my life I was trying to give the world a gift that it just didn’t want!”“Listen to me,” she said, sitting forward in her chair. “I know you. You’re really smart and you have tons of energy. You could have been a judge. You could have been a CEO. Instead, you became a writer – an artist - and artists…. struggle.Another long pause from normally-glib me. Then, “I’m not sure but I think you've just saved me a year of therapy.”“Write a book that isn’t a reworking of columns and sell it to a real publishing house!" she said, walking me to the door. "Forget doing another one yourself.”“I’ve thought of that but how does anyone write 20,000 or 30,000 words? I’m just writing 600 a week and it’s practically killing me!” But going down in the elevator of the Wang Building I got to thinking. ‘Could’ve been a judge,’ she’s said.  ‘Could’ve been a CEO.’  I was never all that smart but I do have a lot of energy, even now. Maybe I should just begin, and see how many 600s it takes to reach 30,000.So my next question is to you, you dark-of-the-night, early-morning friend, if you are out there at all: what do YOU think a book by me should be about?

Let's Get Physicals

I actually like going for my annual physical because my Primary Care doctor is so awesome – plus I’ve been going to her so long it feels like we’re pals. Yesterday, for example,  she so patiently went over all my boring issues writing it all down. Of course being such a GIRL, I went right into apology mode the second she stepped close for the looking down your throat and up your nostrils part “Look at these lines coming around my mouth!” I yipped in self-castigation. “Hey come on, you look great” she said (She’s my same age so we’re talkin’ relative here.) “I have those lines too, see? A few more years and our lipstick will start bleeding down into them!”“So you don’t think we should go get face-lifts?” I said half in jest.“Facelifts, God no! The women I know who with face-lifts look weird. Listen, it’s better to just age. We look a little crappy for a few years but then it all changes and we turn into these beautiful old women in our 70s and 80s.”See why I like her? Beautiful old women in our 70s and 80s! She meant all women in their 70 and 80s are beautiful, and not in spite of being old but because they are old. Like these two bold babes, cigars and flowery caps and all.