Dr. Strangemom (or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the blog)

Born (58 years ago today) To Be Aggravated

My birthday is almost over. Only thirteen more hours. Thank God.

I have a shitload of things I want to do today and they don't seem, I don't know, birthdayish kinds of things, so I have to wait until tomorrow. Which, frankly, flies in the face of everyone's wishes to me to have a great day today. Because a great day is not, at least not for me, a day when I have to hold off on writing a To Do list for Robin. Well, technically, a To Do Alfucking Ready list.  Shit I've been holding off saying to him. Burying it. Seething. Amassing evidence, making my case. In legal terms, I've been in Discovery and now I am ready for Opening Arguments. Well, not arguments, exactly. He doesn't get to talk.

Truth be told, spending my entire birthday writing this list is just about the greatest way I could imagine  spending it. I have three new glitter pens - turquoise for household maintenance projects, orange for special projects, and gold for writing my feelings about his not having gotten these things done - and a pound of cardstock. I am so totally amped. I am going to run out and get a back up gold pen. In case the first one runs out.

All that's left is for me to wait thirteen more hours until I can buckle down to work.

Which persona will I be when I write the list... Long-suffering martyr? Eggshell-tiptoeing enabler? Nazi work captain? Superior high falutin' life coach? Workaday bitch? According to Robin, I tend towards the Mt. St. Helen's school of communication - I spew off a few, unnoticed puffs of steam and then, POW. Next thing he knows, he is coughing up bits of lung and ash and wondering what happened to the sweet 25 year old girl he married. The one who believed he was perfect just the way he is.

I'll tell you what happened to her: she got tired of waiting for the fucking den carpeting to be replaced and the fucking deck to be powerwashed, and she got mean. And fat. And, as I glance at today's circled date on the calendar, old.

Hmm. I might need a few more pens.

Still, if one subscribes to the notion that what one does on one's birthday sets the tone for the entire year, then, I must put off writing The List until tomorrow. Because I really don't want to be That person. The person who, on her birthday, presents her spouse of 32 years with a list of his trangressions against her. On cardstock, written in color-coded glitter pens. Laminated. Framed in a 20 x 40 gold leaf frame. With six wallet-size copies.

I want to be that Other person. The one who devotes her birthday to being grateful for the blessings she has. Yes. That's who I am going to be. It can't be that hard.

Especially if he brings home a cake tonight.

 

For What It's Worth

Right at this very moment, even as you are reading this, the penny is losing value.  It has lost almost 97% of its value so far. That's what they said on NPR. It is shocking, right? I cannot believe it.

I also cannot really understand what it means since a person needs math for this issue. And not only am I woefully clueless about math, I am quite against it. So I must weigh in as against this devaluation business. Even if it occurs during a Democratic administration, I am against it. And I make it a point to never be against anything in a Democratic administration.

I had decided to keep my disapproval to myself. You know, because it's an election year and the world is watching me. But now, economists and NPR commentators feel that because of the devaluation, we should stop making pennies.

And this is where I have to get involved.

Are we going to discard everything that has lost its value? Because I have a bad feeling about that. Frankly, I worry that after they've wiped out the pennies, they will be coming after me. Because, well, talk about your rapid devaluation.

Time was when I could get, I bet, five hundred dollars for me. At least. But just like the penny, in the past decades I have been passed around, lost in couch cushions, discarded into Ronald McDonald House coin boxes at the drive-through window, used to steady an uneven card table and given to homeless people on freeway exits. Who snort derisively because they know worthless when they see it.

The irony is this: the less value I offer, the more money it takes to keep me going. For fuck's sake, my bras alone cost over $200.00 a year. And even that's only if I remember to not put them into the dryer. There was a time when I could fashion a workable brassiere for myself out of two handkerchiefs and a sprig of dried rosemary. I was not a drain on the economy back then.

And there's the matter of my shoes.

In my youth, shoes were optional. At best, they were a five dollar pair of Chinese embroidered slippers. These days it takes the Army Corps of Engineers working with Dansko and Mephisto to figure out how to not make my feet hurt in shoes.

I need about three hundred dollars a month to keep me in Xanax and Zantac. Which I often get mixed up, resulting in a calm stomach during anxiety attacks and falling into a stoned stupor after I eat Indian food. Which reminds me, I should get some more reading glasses.

Oh, and let's not forget the plethora of root canals ahead of me. It takes a whole lotta cheddar to keep up with my devaluation.

Well, cheddar and Kegels. Although lately, I have not been keeping up with the K's. I figure when my bladder gives way to complete incontinence, I will simply stop laughing so hard and that will keep my underpants dry.

I know. No chance I will stop laughing. Not as long as Ann Romney keeps calling herself a typical working mother.

Despite my devaluation, and in defense of my economic worth, however, I want to offer this: soon I will be pretty much single-handedly be keeping Depends in business.

 

 

 

Dr. Strangemom 6:28

Consider the endodontists how they work: they toil (for, like, 35 minutes), they spin (and drill a bit); and yet I say unto you, that the rest of us (hard workers) in all our glory are not arrayed like one of these.

Nor do we drive brand new Range Rovers.

I am not against endos, per se; please understand that. It's just that after his toiling and spinning and root canaling, my fucking molar still hurts. And he drives away in his brand new Range Rover. And I am left to brush my teeth with my head tilted down because God forbid any cold toothpaste should touch my tooth and make my head explode with pain.

It could be a hate crime against the Jews. I will vett this guy to see if he has any ties to Mengele. Now that I think of it, he had an almost inaudible gutteral "kh" when he said the word "machine". And he was very organized. And I could swear he clicked his heels as he left the room when the root canal was over.

So, before I go back there again next week (okay, it is possible that I had two molars needing root canals and now it's the other one that hurts), I just want to consider the life of the endo. You know, as compared to the life of, say, me.

If someone came to me for my expertise and skill (which will be determined at some point in my life before I die. I hope) and after paying me thousands upon thousands of dollars for services rendered, and after I jetted off to, oh, Fiji, for a much needed vacay and then that someone called me to say that, basically, the work I did was ineffective (or unbearably painful), I would think that I am the kind of person who would fly home from Fiji and remedy the work as a freebie. Maybe even send the person an Edible Arrangements bouquet as a pre-emtpive apology. Unless I had given the person a bad root canal because then, you know, the cold fruit would fucking KILL them with pain when they bit into it. But I would like to think that that's the kind of professional I am.

I would not, I hope, get that someone's call and say to them, "oh, that means that there's MORE to the problem than you thought. That means that I need many more thousands of dollars immediately. So, you know, I can hurt you again."

I am beginning to think that my parents might have been right about my majoring in Ethnology of Non-Western Music and Dance with a specialty in Bulgarian singing. And how it wouldn't lead to a career that would afford me trips to Fiji. Or trips to the gas station.

Wait! I know! I am going to call the University of California at Santa Cruz and tell them that my degree is ineffective. I am going to demand my money back and insist they do it again. AND that they send me an Edible Arrangements bouquet as an apology.

Which will fucking KILL me with pain when I bite into it, but I don't care.