naked

this past weekend i celebrated my 6th wedding anniversary with mam. wow, what an old fart we've become!

anyway, we decided early in the year to go away for our anniversary. in years past, we've been haunted by the killing season that is grandparentus interruptus. so even in this even-numbered year, we tempted fate by leaving our cocoon and the princess and piglet puppies home.

we drove 2 hours to get away from our lives here and for me at least, all the worries that accompany it. driving up to lake wallen-ppp-pauck (i can't pronounce the sucker, let's just leave it at that) in the cold hard rain that friday night, i worried that my suburban assault vehicle would go crashing off the road into a tree. i worried that a deer or whole friggin' flock of 'em would come dashing out in front of me and land on my windshield. i worried i would hit a slick patch of leaves and slide off the road into a ditch or worse, into the lake that i can't even pronounce.

somehow i am not sure this exchange would make the next onstar commercial:

onstar: "ma'am, we've detected that your airbags have deployed. is everyone alright?"
me: "no! fcuckin' help me. my mutha-fcukin' car is in water. i think i'm in lake www-all-n-pppp-uck."
onstar: "ma'am, are you alright? have your hit your head? you're not making any sense. i am sending an ambulance to you. can you tell me where you are?"
me: "i told you, i didn't hit my friggin' head! i'm in mutha fcukin' lake www-all-n-pppp-puck. and i can't swim!"
onstar: "ma'am, everything is going to be alright. help is on its way to you. try to keep your neck in one position until help arrives. they can help you with your head injury."

these are the thoughts that run through my head as i am driving on a highway that's not really a highway in upstate pennsyl-tucky. i worry like some people breathe, much too heavy and annoying for everyone in close enough proximity.

but i told myself i was not paying oodles of money to go away and worry in a foreign location. i even picked this location based on how well it was decorated. no, there would be no worrying and i planned to drink and be naked all weekend.

yum. naked. naked and drunk.

it's been a while since i had been either, mostly due to the bloodthinners and my insane body issues. but it's something i have desperately wanted to be for a long time.

after finally arriving at our destination -- in one piece -- it was time to start on the naked and drunk part of our weekend. a nice glass of riesling for me and a godiva martini for mam we were all set to start our weekend of decadence. lots of dirty sex before falling asleep on our wonderfully soft, king-sized bed.

sometime in the middle of the night, i remembered something as i sat up in the bed and gasped for air, i'm allergic to goose down. and right then i discovered i was trapped in a goose down sandwich -- feather bed atop our mattress, comforter and pillows. i hit the allergy trifecta on this one.

realizing that being able to breathe was vitally important to making to morning, i gathered the only non-goose down blanket on the bed and headed over to the sofa by the fireplace. shivering because a leather sofa is fcukin' cold when you're naked and only wrapped in a cotton coverlet, fireplace or no fireplace.

what a way to start an anniversary weekend. but at least i was still a little tipsy.

a letter from a shelter dog

see my face, i am not disposable. look into my eyes, and then look into your heart and you tell me that my life is not worth your effort. your decision to adopt me and make me a member of your family is a life-long, my life-long commitment.


when you decided to move away from our home, did you ever stop to think of me? tell me, did the other two-legged children suffer a similar fate? in this chain-linked exposure where you left me behind, there are many others, who like me, face abandonment by the very ones we loved and trusted the most. it’s sad that you moved too far away to hear my cries at night. i cry at night because all i want is our life back. you remember the one, you would sit at your table and i would lie at your feet. or together, in front of the television, i would snuggle against you hoping that your hand dangling by the sofa would just scratch my belly or that spot behind my ear. you remember, i know you do!

god, what i wouldn’t give to go home with you again! you say you don’t have time for me anymore, i heard you tell the woman at the desk when you left me here. it’s a lie, i know it’s a lie! you don’t mean that, do you? sure, you went away for a long time each day but i understood. you told me you had to earn the dog biscuits. i understood why you left me alone at home. i can’t understand why you are leaving me here alone now.

you may not have been perfect master, but you were perfect to me. i forgave you for those times when you were angry with me that i couldn’t understand what i did wrong. if you told me i was bad, then i probably was, right? you wouldn’t hurt me. i know you wouldn’t hurt me.

this is why i don’t understand why you left me here - scared, alone and without you. i miss you and our life together. sure i know we had a good life. i hear the stories told by the others who surround me in this place. they cry over beatings and neglect, of being hungry and tortured by cruel ones. they lived on the streets and tell scary stories of the world outside of here. no, this is not like you and me at all.

no, outside of here, we took walks together. sometimes, it was just you and i sniffing at the world together. we had food and from time to time, you’d slip me a treat under the table. the comfort of your face meant everything to me.

and now it’s gone. you took your face and your comfort away from me. i sit here alone in this cold place and wonder what happens next. i wonder patiently who will look into my eyes and tell me my life is worth the effort.

design challenged

what to do on a saturday night? if i were my younger self, i would try to round up the goddess girls and we would head out somewhere to raise mayhem.

considering we just spent our afternoon together -- with flugilicious, mam and ljam in tow -- that wasn't going to happen. for those in the know, ljam and mam are NOT to be mistaken for lisa's left and right chicken cutlets. her breasts prefer - "dirk" and "chesty".

instead, mam and i spent out rockin' saturday night like we spent our friday night -- on the sofa, under a blanket, yelling at the television set. to see the many levels of geekdom that resides in our house, just take a look at this picture:

nestled under blankets on the sofa on friday night, we yelled at the tv. we watched as the philadelphia flyers broke mam's heart one more time this season. yes, folks, another ugly loss and an even uglier 1-and-6 start to the season.

of course, mam had high hopes for this season -- "mr. hands-of-lead" (keith primeau) is gone from the team. we were even spared of having the "esche-hole" in goal that night. but it didn't matter. we still yelled at each bonehead move, missed pass and moment of temporary blindness suffered by the refs.

but yelling at the tv doesn't make someone a geek. and although you would think the frequent commercial break flips to see episodes of the new doctor would raise the bar on geekdom, it doesn't come close to saturday night. to any child of the 70s and early 80s who remembers the original dr. who -- bad british sci-fi with corny, tin-foil and cardboard box attempts at robotics -- this new dr. who will knock your socks off. it's classic 1999, straight-to-video cheese.

but i digress. the true level of our geek stature is measured by the fact that on saturday night, we spent a better portion of our night watching home improvement shows and yelling at the tv.

we yelled at the designer who attempt to make over a room on the show. we screamed "no" as the idiot owner attempted to put lipstick-on-a-pig and call it his new girlfriend. we cursed the color pink, all of its hues and vowed to banish from the world of paint stores. we remained hopeful, when a designer showed bold choices to soften the masculinity that abounded in this room, we bemoaned paint colors, fabric choices, overall design schemes. we shook our hands at our rustic, wide-paneled oak ceiling wondering aloud as to "why, why, why, any one would paint over decades old mahoghany panelling in good condition?"

with make-up gun set to whore, these designer and idiot owners try to make the room into something that its not. frilly pastels and chinese florals in a room deserving of leather club chairs and velvet curtains.

you just can't shake who you are. you need to accept your geekiness for what its worth. and you certainly shouldn't be putting lipstick on a pig.

my chickadee

some of my earliest memories take me back to visiting with my grandparents -- my nan and pop-pop's house. during the afternoons, my brother and cousins and i would quietly play for fear of waking my pop-pop from his nap or sleep when he was working the nightshift.

we would know instantly when we would cross the threshold and wake him. we would hear him stir upstairs and occassionally, his booming voice would bellow to us kids playing downstairs "whad-darrrr-ya doin' down there?"

quickly, we'd join my grandmother, chainsmoking in the kitchen watching her soaps on the small "tellervision". taking our assigned seats around the kitchen table, my grandmother would scramble to put away her "mess" - shoving her coupons and unread national inquirer-type magazines with one hand under her placemat, the one with the brown cigarette burns melted into the plastic left behind from the dropped hot ash. the other hand would meticulously scrape up imaginary crumbs from the table to throw out.

not moving, us kids would sit, waiting for him to join us at the table. i would sit at the seat under the window on the backside of the table, the chosen seat -- the one closest to him and i think the only one without fear of his arrival. slowly, he'd make his descent from the front air-conditioned bedroom, smelling freshly showered and full of old spice aftershave. each step he took coming down the stairs was exaggerated, deliberate and full of warning. my brother and cousins would fidget in their seats as he drew closer wanting him to end their agony with his full presence.

steady and rhythmic, he drew closer, coming around the turned wooden staircase at the bottom of the stairs, over the brown-and-orange carved carpeting, through painted white wood paneled walls yellowed from the many cigarettes smoked in there.

and then he would stop. voices hushed in the kitchen, the drama playing out on television hushed along with us, waiting to hear what came next. in a slow, deliberate way, the bear would bend towards the carpet, one-leg extended outward, bending like an overweight ballerina, as the top half lowered itself to the ground to capture what has caught its eye.

to us, it was minuscule. it was a fuzzy. a speck of dirt. to him, it was as if we had left behind pounds of dirt in a carpet that could conceal much if it ever was allowed. after grunting in disgust, he would finish cutting his path through the dining room into the kitchen, stopping under its doorway for emphasis making his arrival known as if we hadn't already sought shelter from him. he showed the speck or fuzzy to my grandmother accusingly. she would wave him away with one arm and towards the trash can tucked in corner with an "ehh, go fug yourself" way that sized up their relationship. the other hand would be grasping a cigarette.

a big man, he imposed himself in our worlds an unshifting, unwielding force to not reckon with but to obey. to this day, i know his legacy lives greater and is strongest in my memory than in real life. i miss what used to come next.

his bear of a man standing in the doorway, harsh and foreboding. lines cut in his forehead, scowl across his face. we'd say "hello pop-pop" and watch the transformation take shape in this man compared to whom mountains seemed more easily moved.

he'd smile this big engaging smile. he slide into his chair at the head of the table and slide in closer. then he's sing - shrill, is more like it - "my chickadee" and smile in my direction. i would just beam, feeling so high that i was his chosen one. he lean in close to ask me about my day, how was school, sports, whatever. it didn't matter.

to my brother, he was the enforcer, reprimanding him as he sat across from him at the table viewing his reflection in the shiny new black microwave.

"are you makin' faces at yourself again?" he'd ask and my brother would sheepishly say yeah under his breath. "sorry, pop" would be the audible response to follow. "don't say you're sorry. just don't do it again."

to me, he was what a father should be.

10-6-12-8-14.... hike!

the range of clothing sizes in my closet is growing at roughly the same rate as the size of my ass.

each article of clothing found in that closet represents a dream, a stage of my past life or present tense. i can pick up a sweater and remember when i last wore it and how it felt or made me feel. i can pick up a pair of pants and remember wistfully when my thighs were that slim and gaze in wonder why at that point in my life did i think i looked fat? i can remember the male friend who remarked that yes, i did indeed have a shelf-ass and the ensuing laughter that following at my posterior's expense.

even with my many sizes, no matter how awful it may look now if i can even get it over the rolls, i have trouble parting with a garment. to rehome that pair of pants signals defeat in any future attempts to wedge my shelf ass into them. what a sad day!

the day i decided to throw away my only pair of size 6 jeans - ever - i died a little on the inside as i cried a bit more on the outside. the pain never quite goes away after that, although the next time it happens, the healing time shrinks a little like throwing cotton pants in the drying for too long.

the process to decide to part with those pants or sweaters is a lengthy one. by the time i've developed the kutzpah to admit defeat and rehome the close, they are often hopelessly out of fashion. admittedly, i am not a fashion-plate to begin with, add the measure of time and well, we're going old school. my poor skinny friends (da bitches!) who inherit them can only finish what i halfheartedly start by giving them their final nudge to good will.

in the good ol' days when i used to shop at goodwill and salvation army (salvo to those in the know), i used to wonder who got rid of all these wonderful clothes. now i know -- some other radically shrinking or expanding folks.

beauty in the breakdown

i knew it, i knew it, i knew it!

photo credit: Vivian Zink/ABC file

even though i knew before the end of the show we would get to see mcsteamy again, he still took my breath away when he stepped out from the bathroom with a very well-placed towel.

yum! once again, addison sheppard montgomery is a very lucky girl even as she has a drunken meltdown over the end of her marriage. she's almost as lucky as meredith who is once again doing the elevator thing with mcdreamy, but now she has mcvet throwing his hand in the ring for her affection.

so we now we see what happens when you are all dark and twisty -- you get the hottest mchunks out there, looking at you lustily while you get to leave your panties behind for someone's ex-wife to find.

i wanna be dark and twisty, too! even though my husband suggests i already am plenty dark and twisty, i am obviously not seeing any of the fringe benefits. for one, i now have a viewing partner since they moved the show slot to thursday. and one who will most certainly will lose his voicebox if he continues to offer commentary or suggest plausibility of a particular scene.

when grey was on sundays, it was just me and my bitches (sadie and chloe) who laughed, cried and screamed with the tv. now, my dic-husband (he's sooo not a "mc") watches with me and claims to understand what's going on but really with his questions, he's just jammering away at my last frayed nerves, edging dangerously close to losing that voicebox.

and poor izzie! looking frumpled and deflated, i love that katharine heigl is woman enough, no -- goddess enough -- to have her character go without makeup, looking like most women would, when her heart has been ripped out and put through a shredder. if i could have crawled into my tv to lay next to her on the bathroom floor to comfort her, i would have.

so there's definitely beauty in the breakdown, especially if mcsteamy comes to comfort you. and if not, then, maybe mcvet will bring you a sandwich.