Carol Confessional

I like Christmas (or whatever we're calling the holidays this week) music. I have listened to so much Christmas music in the last few days that the songs are repeating on one of the free stations on iTunes. 'Holidays (37) streams.' Apparently there are just so many Christmas songs in existence. Who knew?

I like Christmas music because it reminds me of when I was young, and Christmas was perfect (like it's supposed to be!) I felt perfect back then or at least this was in the time before mirrors? I grew old enough to recognize my imperfections -- (was that age three? -- I can't recall) back in the happy golden days of yore. 

From the Hole Of Giuseppe

Last weekend I went to the Fiat Club Christmas party. Chris invited me. Actually I'd not go otherwise because I don't care about Fiats. I care about Chris. But let me tell you, these folks REALLY care about their Fiats except one guy who owns a Lancia Beta and some guy who parked his Ferrari, hogging the driveway with the car (and his ego) so no one else could park there. We had to park my Acura down the street undercover of darkness. (Oh, I should add that the reason we took my Acura is it has a working heater.)

The revelers had one of those White Elephant gift exchanges only at this party they call this type of gift exchange an Italian gift exchange (Italian insofar as the gift you give away has to do with Italy, Fiats, Italian cars, food or wine). I bought a small gift box entitled something like "A Walk Through Tuscany." It was a pleasant gift, meeting the exchange criteria -- something to do with Italy and $15.00 bucks max.

Typically I like gift exchanges. If you set rules and criteria for them, and party-attendees follow those rules and criteria, you can have a lot of fun though the phrase "rules and criteria" doesn't conjure up an image of tons-O-fun. If the rules around the limit of cash for a gift or if the rule-maker du jour (OMG, more French -- alert my doctor!) says the gift must be home-made, you can enjoy other folks creativity or you can get real crap. It all depends (eww, almost a pun for those paying attention).

The corny thing about being at a party where they love their Fiats is that all the jokes about bumper over-riders, license plates, tool sets, flares and emergency kits kinda go over my head. It's like...Okay, time to get this party started -- Helloooo?

There were about thirty people at this gathering so drawing numbers and picking out presents was going to take some time. I sucked it up and played along. I drew number 28. There were very few wrapped gifts to chose from by the time my number was hollered out though I could have stolen nearly any gift opened by previous gift openers. Let's see -- See's Candy (was Mary See, Italian?), wine (did the label say "vino?"), an owl salt & pepper shaker set (possibly this is a Made In China gift exchange?).

I am such a doofus though -- pretending I don't want to be mean and take anyone's previously chosen (and now highly coveted) Fiat-related gift. I don't want to make folks angry. (What was wrong with me? Someone must have slipped something in my drink.) I drew my gift from the small pile and it felt heavy (hmm, promising). I opened it and the package was filled with AAA batteries and cylindrical shaped tubes! Yes, A coup! -- Could these be... could this be my wildest dream come true? A four pack of vibrators!?! No, these were varying sizes of flashlights for my non-existent Fiat. I had to take a breath. I sat down and prepared for what remained of the evening. I felt safe.

Having called the next number, the guy jumped up out of his chair, walked right over to me and asked me for my package of vibrators just when I was thinking I was home free. I had even slightly started my own coveting. What an ass he was! This meant I'd have to pick another crappy gift from under the tree.

Filled with holiday (aka champagne-induced) glee along with exchange-gift trepidation I eye-balled the few gifts remaining, and grabbed the first one I touched. (The evening was taking forever with these slow-moving Fiat people). This gift was extremely light-weight. I was doomed. I tore away the wrapping paper and inside was a "gift" that had a Post-it note which ALWAYS means the gift is crap (or it's a gift of Post-it notes (cheap bastard!) (when the gift-tor has to explain a gift with a Post-it to the gift-tee, make it easy on everyone and call a draw). (Or break-up with that person - relationship over! That's okay to do too). Post-its on gifts are major red flags (why-O-why does 3M make Post-its yellow?). No one ever puts a Post-it on a diamond or a box of candy or wine. Or anything Italian -- even Italian sausage (unless they left the sausage on the kitchen counter for a week during the summer and the Post-it says, "Warning, DO NOT EAT. Science experiment.")

The gift I had drawn and opened had all the signs of gag. The Post-it note has something scrawled that I can't make out because it's late at night, I'd had that damn champagne earlier and I can't see without my glasses which is why I was sure that my first gift pick was a package of vibrators.

Let's see what's in here ... underwear with a big brown smudge -- literally and figuratively a gag gift. I'm sure whoever bought this gift and actually spent their hard-earned money on it, thinks their gift is the most hysterical gift ever. And I am turned off (as nasty and mean as I admit I can be at times) at this pair of dirty underwear for hiding money (security underwear?) is not funny because I followed the rules of the game, picking a useful gift, a thoughtful gift, a re-giftable gift (is it my fault that the guy who picked my gift is slightly disabled, penniless and declared in a booming voice that he would never have the money for prosthetic feet let alone the money to travel?) not a pair of dirty underwear. And some Fiat-loving goober thought that these smudgie-looking underwear were designed by an Italian fashion designer or perhaps someone had pooped their pants at the Vatican or had an little accident at Buca de Beppo.

The Post-it note revealed only these hysterical words "maybe these underwear were worn on a Fiat tour." I guess you had to be there for THAT lightening strike of hilarity. But let this be a warning (or a Post-it) for all you Fiat-lovers. Next year I'm stealing.

Hannah Hates Holidays

Sacre Bleu!

I just returned from the gynecological oncologist. Membah him? (Probably not -- why would you?) He's the doctor who wanted me to speak French by the time my December appointment rolled around. Well, the appointment rolled around today and I'm no more a French speaker today than the last appointment. 

Earlier this morning I was feeling kind of dirty (even after my shower) knowing I had to go visit him. I didn't want to go to the appointment. Chris suggested I take the tape recorder and "turn him in!" But I can't see myself doing that. I could, however, see myself asking him to quit asking me to speak French and to quit being creepy. I sort of ran through a few scenarios that ultimately I didn't have to use because the appointment ran smoothly, more humane (even though the appointment involved a rectal exam) then normal.

Before he came into the room, I noticed a strange substance the exact color of mustard on the counter next to the tongue depressors (why?) in case he asked me about speaking French, I decided I'd ask about the dijon and should the opportunity arise, I'd put my best French accent on the J (jzhe?) and leave off the n at the end (deej-jzho?). (That ought to be enough French to tide him over.) When filling out the patient form, (we have to do that with each visit listing dates, new surgeries, new tests and results) I had written down that my new, latest concern was that I did not speak French.

So when he came into the exam room, he said that comment made him laugh. And I said, " I didn't even think you read that part of the form." The exam began and he squished and felt up my liver, spleen, kidneys and said they all felt normal. Then he went "down there" hiding behind the paper curtain and did something that involved some part of me but because I could not see (even though I had torn numerous holes rendering this paper "gown" useless for the next patient), I had no idea what he was doing. (Grown numb with age?)  Then he went on the journey to the center of the earth which included a rectal exam AT THE SAME TIME?!? 

Then I started talking to him about how he got into this line of work. I mean, what makes someone decide that they are going to stick their fingers and thumbs inside women's bodies for a career? And not just women's bodies but their rectums. So he told me.

*Snore* 

Seriously, he said "being an oncologist takes it's toll." (Try being a your patient, *staring backwards over my shoulder to check my rectum*). He said, "I try not to take it home but I take it home. And this is why I cherish each Christmas card I get." 

*Wondering* 

Was I supposed to send him a card? Because I didn't. 

Désolé pour le retard!

What's Cookin, Good Lookin?

Hannah is visiting today. She's too sick to go to daycare so she's hangin at her "bam-mah's" house. She gets 99% of her illnesses from the daycare but when she has a hint of a sneeze, she has to stay home from daycare -- this is a strict daycare rule.

 I don't know what a working parent is supposed to do, and Hannah's mom must work for a living (especially now that we're bailing out banks, the Big Three and eventually people who over-borrowed to buy their mansion - I mean, come on someone needs to pay their fair share to the sorry Wall-Street-ed sots). In fact, if Hannah goes to day care and almost instantaneously gets some vomity disease from some vomity, green-booger-nosed kid standing to her right in the Ring Around the Rosie circle, Hannah and her mom (and sometimes Bam-mah) are up shit creek for a few days. Hannah's mom has to cancel her entire day of appointments the very same day and rush over to pick up Hannah from the cesspool daycare. I believe to add insult to injury, the daycare makes the situation worse by banishing the child to the curb with some assistant daycare flunky to wait for the parents arrival so everyone and their cousin can see who's got the big cootie on any given day. 

The daycare should have a daycare for the sick kids. They can daycare them at the regular daycare, get them all sick, germ-y, green mucous-covered, and hacking with phlegm-filled lungs at regular daycare, and once sick, send the kids over to sickness-induced-by-daycare daycare where the sick kids can recover from the sickness brought about by attending regular daycare. (This is a great plan - why have I kept silent for so long?)

I was sick earlier this week because the guy the company hired to cook some of the food for our company holiday party had been sick with the flu. It was a barbeque so the cook shook everyone's hands as he was introduced, wiping his nose on his apron, coughing on the tri-tip, dripping god-knows-what on the chicken, adding a pinch of death and a dash of destruction in his wake. (No big deal to him. He wasn't going to catch anything.) (After all it wasn't he who just get out of chemo MONTHS ago.) 

I think this "cook" should pay my sick wages for the three days I missed (where I was forced to remain flat on my back -- watching reruns of My Shocking Story, You Are What You Eat (Damn that BBC!), and Dr. G. Medical Examiner), out of the money the company paid him for cooking our germ-laden repast. And while he's at it, he should have been made to come into our trailer office during my absence and help my sister. And when he's finished doing the work I missed while sick, he can come to my house and rub my feet -- my icky freakin toes and all. What kind of germ-ridden idiot cooks food for a crowd of people? Oh, wait ... I can answer that -- a mom.

Anyway...Hannah is great. She is such a brat when she's sick. She acts like she hates me but I know she loves me because sometimes she will say, "POD, don't leave" though it all sounds like gibberish, I can make out the words so clearly. When she's being sick-bratty, she makes a noise that I can't even spell so I can't mimic that for you though it's music to my ears. Last week she asked if I wanted to "play dishes" with her. I had to go upstairs (OMG! Heat rises -- Menopause alert) and sit inside her stuffy, melamine-tainted, plastic dish-filled (melamine-tainted) tent while she served me assorted (melamine-tainted) blocks on plates. All the blocks were delicious, filled with germs and cooties (and melamine). She's going to grow up to be a pretty darn good cook.

White Trash Christmas

I'm back at work today after several days of faking it illness. Because we have extraordinary enthusiasm around this time of year, my sister and I have decorated our office for the holidays which means we took this one little light-up cube thing that my sister received in our company White Elephant gift exchange (gift must be home-made, less than $10.00 -- and pretty much all you can make with those limits are a toilet paper and paste statue with sprinkles from the kitchen (if you're lucky enough to have sprinkles and unused T.P.) and stuck the deco on the paper-shredder behind my desk. It looks fabulous. Jealous?

And no, we don't really work in a trailer. 

The Real Housewife of Snotty Noses

I'm home from work for the second day in a row with a nasty cold, flu-ish thing. I can't tell what this sickness is --  it came on fast with the first symptom being laryngitis; symptoms worsened from there. I'm taking the hint. I'm silent  except for blogging and the occasional call from a bill collector. I just got over a similar illness about two weeks ago. I'm on antibiotics for a partial foot infection, and here I am in bed, going on about all these symptoms (as if they are something special), trying not to make my blog about illness. Talk about boring.

 

I've watched nearly every 2006 episode of the Real Housewives of Orange County today. For a change of pace, (although I can't decide which is worse) I put on the spa channel on XM and am listening to "New Age" music pretending that I'm getting a facial. It's not working. I'm not feelin' the facial.

The Real Housewives of Orange County are just like you and me. They get sick. They blow their noses, drink too many glasses of green tea and leave cups around, lay in bed channel surfing for something to distract them from their illness boredom. The only difference is that they are all younger, they have Botox and enormous boobs, and most of them spend someone else's money (except for Vicki - she may not be as attractive as the rest but she works her ass off for her own money.) I would love to see a Real Housewives show about their real lives rather than these fake set-up "reality" shows. I don't believe a word of this nonsense yet I watch the show, intrigued as if the content were gospel.

Nearly every holiday season someone sends out a letter filled with only the good things that happened to their family throughout the year. My sister and I joke about writing a letter with the real things that happened to us and sending that content out at the end of the year. These holiday letters are just like the Real Housewives shows. Yet I want to know who died? Who got cancer? Who's house was foreclosed? Who can't get financial aid? How many times the police called about your son or daughter? How many times you ate or drank too much because you're an addict? Give us the truth so we know you're normal because we don't believe these letters anymore than we believe The Real Housewives show; we know these letters offer only a chipper microcosm. This year strip naked, send a picture and include with your letter. Give us something to look forward to each year. In other words -- make it interesting.

I keep thinking I need to get out of bed and at least wash a dish. I'll come back to bed exhausted from washing my one dish, plop my butt back on the bed and watch the cat hair rise in little tufts only to settle back down on the quilt like mini drifts of snow -- which reminds me that if I were to put up a small Christmas tree on my bed, the ideal winter wonderland reality TV version of the holidays would be nearly complete.

Suzanne Somers - My Other Twin

Photos courtesy of Thighmaster and Masterthighs (aka me)

On (only my interest of) the subject of celebrities keeping their own lymphedema a dirty little secret, I read a blurb last night indicating that Suzanne Somers has lymphedema. That biaaach She has kept quiet (at least to me) about her lymphedema for some time (7 years) and even had liposuction which would probably cause more lymphedema.

Ms. Somers can be found endorsing this machine is made by a company called ONDAMED, which I'm guessing is pronounced On-Da-Med (imagine what you could do with one extra 'm' in that word?)

WORD!

Life Recipes

I'm am eating my fave snack of sugar-free Jello™ mixed with non-fat fage. (I know you're jealous.) I pray this combo does not cause cancer. For me, it may be too late though I'm okay with it because when one of those well-meaning folks says to me, "What did you eat that caused your cancer?" I can give them my secret recipe.

I went for my CT scan. I didn't have to experience the rectal contrast part of the exam that I wrote about in my last blog post. The CT scanner technician said that when he performed CT scans back east they "always had to do the rectal scan." He hated watching the patients suffer during what he referred to as "a crappy time in their lives."

Normally you get a CT scan when things aren't going so great, health-wise (unless you have a fetish and excellent health insurance). In the middle of a scary CT scan, a technician announces that he must do a rectal screening and the poor patient already filled to every possible brim with nasty barium, simply can't take any more. This technician said that announcing the rectal contrast scan is sort of the icing on the cake -- (is that like a bad choice of words?) He said (and this was his perception from what I could gather) the patient's emotions around the rectal contrast part of the scan became over time, too much for the technician to deal with. When he left New York, he said he was never going to do CT scans again if those scans involved rectums and/or people. Yet, here he is in California, living among 38 million assholes, still performing CT scans. Now that's what I call courage.

Then the technician and I discussed my photo necklace because that was the only article of clothing I was wearing that had to be removed for the scan. (These folks are seriously laid back).

I thought I'd have to remove all my clothing, compression bandaging too, and get into a tiny hospital gown that covered my front (or backside) and maybe half of my butt.) But I was still fully clothed. Hey, I could do this more often!

The technician told me he thought the picture of me on my necklace looked "just like a photo of the Dalai Lama." (not some horror movie actor as Chris had said previously). Then the technician went off on a discussion of what he might ask the Dalai Lama if he met him some place on the street? (Random.) (And I totally think it would depend on where you met him). Then the technician turned to read the inscription on the back of the photo part of the necklace which says, "peel your image from the mirror" (from the Derek Walcott poem). Then the technician started talking about reading "all those Carlos Castaneda books" and how after reading many of them, he had a dream.

In the dream, Carlos Castaneda and the technician (they were much younger then) were walking together, side by side, and after a short walk, Carlos (they were on a first name basis) instructed the technician to look into a mirror.

Then the technician told me that in this dream when he looked into a mirror he had long black hair! (Dude. Awesome!)

When the technician awoke from the dream, his friends told him it was bad luck if you could see yourself in the mirror in a dream. (Dude. Seriously.)

When the scan was finished and I arose from the table to leave, the technician asked if I needed his help putting my necklace on? So I took him up on his offer. It felt like a very tender moment. Why would he help me do this? I must really be getting old to even notice such things. For him, the experience was probably like helping an old lady cross the street though he isn't much younger than I. Getting this kind of attention from a person in the medical field is not normal. But then, neither was this technician.

The technician told me that he had been studying Tibetan Buddhism long enough to understand that if you meet the Dalai Lama, you're supposed to ask something really off the wall. Then the technician escorted me back to the lobby. I will see him again next scan unless he gets a clue about the asshole-to-CT technician ratio in California.

The CT scan was not very traumatizing in and of itself. What's more traumatizing is what the scan *might* reveal. Even if the scan doesn't reveal a tumor or cancer or malformed, swastika'd - out intestines, it reveals layers of body fat and body fat is as bad as cancer to a lot of people.

If I met the Dalai Lama on the street, I'd ask him the results of his scan. (That question is pretty off the wall.) He'd take a few moments to recover after meeting his mirror image (aka me). Then he'd tell me that in his scan they discovered compassion, reverence for life, love and a great sense of humor. And to the Dalai Lama's response, I'd reply, "Touche'." Then we'd go grab ourselves a cup of green tea.

P.S. Many thanks to my son, Danny for his myspace photos.

There's More to Us Than Surgeons Can Remove

The scan was/is clear so that is great news. I spent most of today at different doctors.

Have to get back to work!