Stopped Up

I have a clogged drain.

No, that is not a metaphor for some sort of female anatomy distress, I am serious. I have a clogged drain. In our master bath shower.

I am mechanically inclined and if I had really thought about it out of high school, I probably should have pursued a career that had me using my hands to fix stuff.

Just not clogged drains.

Because while being adept with a screw driver has a certain sexy appeal, having a well developed visual gag reflex is a bit of a problem when it comes to pulling chunks of hair, soap and goopy, sticky, brown ick out of a 2" pipe.

I had on a yellow rubber glove and tried to reach in and grasp the clog but it was lodged too far down.

"I need tongs"

Dallas looked at me, raised his eyebrows and said, "Tongs?"

"Yes. Tongs."

He is quite careful not to mess with me when I'm hormonally imbalanced and I could see him sniffing the air to see if he could pick up the scent of crazy so instead of sending him into the kitchen to forage for a utensil that we would never be able to use again (and risk hearing him mutter under his breath which could have sent me over the edge), I asked him to pass me the cuticle scissors.

While not nearly as effective as tongs would have been, I was able to use the very tip of the scissors to catch the tail end of the clog. I pulled. I dragged and like the clown who tugs foot after foot of handkerchief out of his mouth, this clot went on forever. Out came a giant chunk of something that resembled a rotting oyster. I gagged and then dry heaved.

Dallas thought it was a beauty, like I had been out on the ocean and hooked a big one on my line. "That ought to fix it," he said.

Except it didn't. I took my shower and still found water pooling at my ankles. Since I had just caught a glimpse of what lurked in the drain, I gagged again at the thought of standing in that goop.

Home ownership is dirty business.

Michael Jackson

The news of Michael Jackson's death late Thursday afternoon was shocking. At first, my feelings were confused. Like many, I watched Michael morph from a confident, beautiful black man to a frail, disfigured white man who purportedly had a taste for young boys. He disgusted me. I didn't pity him. I judged him to be loathsome. And really, it was astonishingly easy to do. The surgeries, the excesses, the chimp, the alleged pedophilia, the Diana Ross obsession, the Beatles song catalogue...In my opinion, the guy was a nutter and worthy of my scorn.

But nobody can deny his gift for entertaining. His music is the soundtrack for an entire decade of my life. And after reading the comments of Elizabeth Taylor, Lisa Marie Presley, Quincy Jones and Deepak Chopra, I'm not sure what to think anymore. Even though I've always held that where there is smoke, there is fire, I'd like to believe that Michael Jackson wasn't a monster. Instead, I'd like to believe that he was a troubled and naive man who never understood the trappings of his celebrity. It's easier to mourn him that way.

I read a blog post by Andrew Sullivan which resonated with me. You can find it here.

Before the extreme surgeries, the prescription drugs, the lurid rumours and the evident withdrawal from reality, there was this Michael.

He seemed happier then.

This is how I choose to remember him.





(Picture courtesy of Time Magazine. On news stands today.)

Good Bye, Farrah.

I wasn't planning on posting today but just now, I read the news that Farrah Fawcett has passed away after her much publicized battle with cancer.

God, that makes me sad.

She was the first television star that registered on my radar. I thought she was the prettiest, most glamourous woman that I had ever seen and like millions of other girls, I sat in the beauty shop begging for the stylist to feather my hair just like Farrah's. I wanted to grow up and marry the Six Million Dollar Man, too. To me, she was the perfect combination of feminine, sporty, strong and smart. And she seemed genuinely nice. I yearned to be her.

Perhaps the news of her death has hit me like this because cancer is such a painful way to go. More likely, it is because remembering her takes me back to the happiest years in my childhood. Frozen Koolaid popsicles on a hot summer day, the feel of Brûlé beach between my toes and arguing with my cousins about who got to be Jill Munroe in our game of Charlie's Angels are all hallmarks of my fondest memories.

I am going to choose to remember her like this when she was the picture of health and the world was her oyster.

Rest in Peace, Farrah.

Treasure of a Different Sort

Saturday, Olivia was loitering in my room while I was getting ready to go out to a business dinner with Dallas.

Lately, she has become far more interested in make up and jewelry and I just don't have the heart to inform her that I was not gifted with the girlie girl genes. Why should I stress her out by telling her that she is likely to struggle accessorizing or finding the will to do her hair every morning? Why burst that bubble?

Anyway, Liv was clearly looking for some mother/daughter bonding time which under normal circumstances, I'm happy to indulge. Saturday was a different matter entirely. I had cleaned like a maniac for most of the day and left late in the afternoon to finish shopping for Father's Day. I got home minutes before five in the afternoon, with both kids in tow and less than an hour to get showered, dressed and primped. If hair is part of the equation, an hour is not enough time. If excessive humidity is part of the picture, an hour is not enough time. If the dry cleaners is closed before you pick up your clothes, an hour IS NOT ENOUGH TIME!

So, I was the tiniest bit stressed out and Olivia was needy. Trying to do my best to avoid the "Worst Parent of The Year" award, I asked if she would help me pick out my jewelry. This thrilled her to no end and just as I was about to give myself a congratulatory pat on the back, Olivia gasped, walked into the bathroom, pointed her finger at me and said, "YOU are the tooth fairy!"

You know those moments as a parent when you are at a complete loss as to how to handle a situation? Yeah, that was me.

She looked at me, wide-eyed and incredulous. In her hand was the small treasure box that I had given her six times previously, into which she had put a newly extracted tooth. She would slide it under her pillow and in the morning, it was magically replaced with a dollar bill. She found the damn thing in my jewelry box, full of all six of her baby teeth.

As her expectant face stared into my own, I had several fantastical lies run through my head:

1. The tooth fairy left it behind because I was so sad when she took your teeth away.

Or

2. I bought the teeth back from the tooth fairy so I could keep them for your baby book.

Or

3. The tooth fairy has a nasty coke habit and needed to sell the teeth to feed her addiction.

As it turned out, I just couldn't lie to her. She knew. I could tell by her face that anything other than the truth would have been a breach of trust between us.

"You're right," I conceded, "I'm the tooth fairy."

She smiled and said, I KNEW it!"

As I witnessed her processing the information, as evidenced by her furrowed brow and faraway look, I held my breath waiting for the last few bits of little girl innocence to fly away as she connected the dots to Santa and the Easter Bunny. But instead, she surprised me by asking that I leave Junie B books rather than dollar bills the next time she lost a tooth.

Clever, enterprising girl.

And then she walked back to my jewelry box and picked out the perfect earrings to go with my outfit.

Thirty Two Days and Counting

I think I mentioned briefly in May that I was back on the diet bandwagon again. Well like most diets, it didn't work because it wasn't a lifestyle. Whatever. It didn't work because I cheated. LOTS. Have you ever tasted the ultimate nachos at Buffalo Wild Wings? They are cheat-worthy. As are their wings. And their delightful selection of beer. My God, I love beer. For nearly twenty years, I didn't have so much as a sniff of a bottle cap. I drank wine instead. I don't know what the hell I was thinking. I'm Canadian.

Anyway, I managed to stick to things for a week that time and dumped a pant size, which was okay but not top ten or anything because they were my freaking fat pants. You know, the ones where you deliberately remove the inside size tag so that you don't jump in front of moving vehicles when you have to employ a hanger to get the bastards done up. Fat pants, by virtue of containing both polyester and spandex, should never leave pressure marks on one's flesh. Mine became uncomfortably snug. So I dieted. AGAIN.

But I don't think I had enough motivation because back then, the trip to Mexico was still better than ten weeks away and once you've shed 30 pounds in 43 days on the HCG diet, losing two pounds a week with a healthy lifestyle change is like swimming in a pool of molasses. Two pounds a week? Not for a gal who has the attention span of a gnat. From my point of view, I had a few more weeks before having to get serious about the diet.

Well like all good things, the days of carbohydrates had to come to an end. A week ago today, Dallas and I went back on the HCG diet. I have been deadly serious this time because the Mexican vacation with our friends and my dimpled ass is a mere thirty two days away today. I have shed 12 pounds in 8 days. I have 18 more to go.

Now before all of you out there who are shaking your head decide to shoot off that email lecturing me about the nutritional ills of yo-yo dieting and all of that stuff, please know that I know. I have researched the topic. For THIRTY YEARS! I promise that I will completely revamp my lifestyle once we are back from Mexico. I swear that I will exercise regularly and pay attention to portion control. I understand. I've read, Younger Next Year and I believe every word of it. My mother is a living testament. I get it.

But until then, I'm going to eat my cucumbers, filet and Melba toast and go to bed each night with visions of fresh guacamole, Dos Equis and a dimple free ass in my head.

¡Olé! Baby.