The pinnacle (or is it nadir?) of absurdity

So the other day I had another obstruction day, or as I have come to call it, The Festival of Vomit. Yes, some mystery item that I ate, which I've eaten a million times without incident, because whaddaya know I have a pretty limited diet since I try to avoid things that motherfucking might get stuck, became lodged in the a) narrow part, b) scarred tissue or c) diseased area [depending on which doctor you talk to] of my small intestine and resulted in horror-movie pain, vomiting, yadda yadda yadda. BIG sigh. And I've been doing so well lately too.

But bear with me. This gets funny.

I also recently tried Botox. Hang on while I brace myself for a chiding from the three of you: OK. I'm ready, BRING IT....

OK, done. I know everything lame you can say about Botox. And I agree. But I have a perma-frown and I hate it and I've lived in San Diego for too long and I just thought: I'll try it. So I did.

They tell you it takes 7 - 10 days to kick in, but the initial injection left me with very slight swelling in the frowny area. Just enough, as it turns out, to kind of plump out the frown and give me a preview of what I'd look like without a frown for the first time in a decade.

And I liked it. So sue me, I liked it: I was looking forward to the effects of an injection of a deadly neurotoxin right between the eyes.

Then the Festival of Vomit kicked in and I kind of forgot about my frown. Or was frowning extra. Or just felt more desperate than a little wild animal with its leg in a trap somewhere. Until...

Until around about Puking #3, after which I was hanging my head over the sink, frantically rinsing the muck out of my mouth, when I glanced in the mirror and noticed the merest impression, a slight dent really, in the flattering post-injection, pre-neurotoxin-effect swollen area. At first I thought, Hunh. This will never do. And then I realized: it's from resting my head on the edge of the toilet seat. I tried smoothing it out. No dice. I moved on, busy with curling up on the floor, fighting off the shakes, reassuring the Bean that I was fine and didn't need a boo-boo strip, etc. (Bean after witnessing Puking #1, gazing into toilet beside me: "What that called?" Uhhhh....)

The Festival of Vomit final score was eight times in three hours; sometime after Puking #6 I glanced in the mirror and realized that I had so successfully and rapidly un-hydrated myself that the flattering anti-frowny fillerouter swelling, and the attendant toilet-seat-edge dent, was totally gone. Just like that [snaps fingers].

And I actually felt disappointed. Then I laughed. What's wrong with this picture!? What's wrong with someone who is so worried about how the outside looks that she's willing to get shots to improve it, while her insides rot and turn into Swiss cheese? How absurd is it to be worried about a cosmetic dent in your cosmetic Botox zone while you are puking your guts out because your small intestine is blocked? I mean really. To be disappointed that some sort of frown-curing, post-injection swelling is gone, because your intestinal obstruction dehydrated you... there aren't words for it.

This pretty much sums up how I feel during The Festival of Vomit.

PS:

Also during this Festival of Vomit I told myself that it wasn't as bad as previous occasions because vomit wasn't ALSO coming out of my nose. And then during Puking #7, it happened, and I was disappointed: Ah, THERE it is, the nasal spewing! And here I thought I would escape it! What kind of whistling past the cemetery is that? In retrospect it saddens me that I try to slice it so thin, try to sell myself this bill of goods: a Festival of Vomit is less worse, can't be quite that bad, if only I don't throw up out my nose.

Photo credit: The Exorcist, DUH. Via a site called Film School Rejects.

Caution: The Vampires You Are About To Enjoy....

... May Be Extremely Hot:

The Vampire Diaries Cosmic Love Trailer

The Vampire Diaries Season Two Trailer: Year of the Kat

Season 2 premieres Thursday night at 8 and I'm already counting the days... hours... minutes!

We are all always almost dying

This happened just over a year ago, and it's taken me that long to get up the gumption to post it where anyone else MIGHT read it.

****

Bean could have died the other day – but isn’t that true of all of us? On the one hand, it scared the shit out of me, and on the other hand, I tell myself – well, did he REALLY almost die? Am I being too dramatic? He didn’t suffer an injury or an illness, his heart didn’t stop, he didn’t need CPR. But he ran out into the street - the very busy street, the very large street in front of Lost Rose’s house - and could so easily have been squished under the tires of some speeding car. What would have been the tipping point? One more second? One more car? How close is too close?

He had knocked over a fan in Rose’s living room, breaking the cage-like cover loose. I was fixing that. Rose went into the kitchen and in passing Bean she said, jokingly, “Now, don’t go outside!” I clicked the fan blade cover into place and looked up: no Bean… but hadn’t he just been rightthere? The front door was open, and I thought, oh please don’t be outside. I ran outside calling his name, I ran across the porch to the corner of the house thinking, oh please let him have gone around the house. But of course he didn’t, of course he just plowed across the lawn and down the driveway and was capering about on the blacktop shoulder of the road, inches from the traffic lane. With the sun shining down on him, running in circles, waving his arms, giggling, delighted to have gotten out of the house and pulled one over on his mama. I ran – I ran so fast I ran right out of one of my sandals. I don’t even remember running. I am not a runner. I joke that I only run if someone is chasing me but now I really know: I run for Bean.

People say all the time that in an emergency they froze: they felt their feet were glued down, that they couldn’t run, that they were underwater or in slow motion. Not me. I didn’t feel the time it took to get across the lawn to Bean – I saw him and then I flew, or leapt, and then I was holding him in my arms. I doubled over with my baby folded in my middle and sobbed out loud. It was horrifying. A man had stopped in the center turning lane and was about to get out of his car to grab Bean when Rose and I came flying out the front door. He was nice about it – I would have been yelling, and maybe I wanted him to yell, felt I deserved to be yelled at - but he just wanted to make sure we were all right.

The rush of adrenaline and fear was so acute that I had the shakes – shaky hands, a quivery back, jelly knees – for a good two hours. When I got safely home and Bean was asleep, I downed a shot of tequila. I couldn’t believe I had been so stupid as to let my child – my only child, my precious, treasured, beloved child – wander onto a busy street. But could I have done more? Of course I could have left the broken fan and kept my eyes glued to my child, but who can anticipate at any time in which direction he will break? He is in constant motion and after awhile you just get used to it. You try so hard, you think you are a good mom, you think you keep an eye on your kid, but it turns out: you don’t. You can’t. No one can operate at Threat Level Red or DEFCON 1 every second of the day – and so when you think you are paying attention but you really aren’t, your baby could get killed.

What stabbed me about watching him standing in the road was how unaware of danger he is – he was so happy to be dancing around on asphalt meant for cars and not for little feet, and I felt like all the danger was thrust on me and Rose because we knew. But as I considered it later, I thought, none of us really knows. We are all going to die, and no one can protect us, and not one of us knows when it’s coming. We all know this but we stuff it down, ignore it, and move on. It’s the deal we make with fate in order to get out of bed and face up to life every day. We are all always almost dying. We are all just standing in the sunshine – there’s no guarantee that you will ever be more than you are at this very moment.

Sometimes the loss of someone you love makes you grateful for what you do have in life – but in this case the gift of this one sweet boy has made me acutely aware of all I stand to lose.

Bean on the day he wandered out into the road - looking at this picture makes me sick to my stomach. It makes me want to run into the other room right this second where he is [not] napping and gather him up into my middle all over again, as though he's still in danger in this very moment.

Also as a postscript, Lost Rose's broken screen door latch was fixed the same day by her husband, so now he CAN'T wander out the front door even if I'm not watching him like a hawk.

Shameful Husband Gripe #2,471

I hate it when he whistles.

I know, it's shameful. I mean, who doesn't like whistling? It's akin to not liking puppies, or rainbows. But I can't help myself - I hate it when he whistles.

And the worst part is, it's not even like The Uptight Yankee engages in tuneless, absent-minded whistling through his teeth, or anything excruciating like that.

No, instead, he whistles along with the music. The nerve of that man.

It just keeps getting worse - I reveal new depths of my pathological pickiness with each word that I type!

But I can't help it - we'll be listening to a perfectly good song - Peg from Steely Dan, or maybe Folsom Prison Blues from Johnny Cash, and he'll just start whistling and I'll think to myself: "You're ruining it for me!" But I don't say anything - how could I? He's so happy, I can't possibly say anything.

It's an indefensible position, being against whistling. But there you have it: I hate it when he whistles.

I guess that's why it's called "Team Damon"

I want to watch the first Vampire Diaries webclip on this post from the lovely vampire-diaries.net over and over again. Like, every minute, all day, every day. I want to watch it like a lab rat wants to hit the go button, again and again 'til it dies.

I know, disturbing, right? But the lab rat dies happy!

Be My (Belated) Valentine

I'm so far behind, it's just ridiculous. Since I posted "What I am is a really, really, really big mess," I became an even bigger mess. But about a week ago, I started to feel better. Not kick-ass, totally all-clear better, but ... better than absolutely shitty all the time.

Yesterday I cleaned my bathroom, which hadn't been done since three months ago... hmmm... about the time I started getting sick. (No need to call the health department... I kept up to date on the grody bits, for sure.) And I thought, if I feel good enough to clean my bathroom, I should try hitting the blog! Wheeeee! Blogging!

But... I'm so far behind. Let me start by giving a big, juicy, totally legal yet still creepy Virtual Birthday Kiss [*shmwack*... on the cheek of course! Dirty birds!] to Baby Tay-Tay on the occasion of reaching his majority, last Thursday, February 11th. I wore my Team Wolfpack shirt all day long, in public. Yes, I'm 35. So what? Stop staring at me!

And speaking of Tay-Tay, let me move on to this...

Memo to Taylor Lautner: it's SO you.

In December (see what I mean about being behind?) I walked into my hair salon and my stylist - who I love - wordlessly handed me this:

In which I read this:

“This could have happened to anyone who played Jacob,” Lautner tells RS. “It’sTwilight. It’s not me personally.”

And Taylor, I would just like to say: it's SO you. Puhleeze, honey:

It's not Jacob, it's not Twilight. It's you.

You know what, three readers? Fuck it. You should see all of the photos, here. Your retinas will thank you.

Sources: the quote and photos all came from Rolling Stone. The photographer was Mark Seliger and the photos are tagged.

Feel Better, Ms. James

I'm mindlessly surfing the net and I came across this news article. Rut-ro.

Oh, Etta James, please feel better! The Uptight Yankee and I saw her in concert maybe five years ago, and she was a dirty old bird, and we loved her for it. She had to ride a motorized scooter out to a stool center-stage, but then she was able to get off the stool from time to time for a good old bump-and-grind routine. Whoa. Love her. And if I can't feel better, well, I at least want her to.