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

Phila

God help me, we have a puppy.

She's my change-of-life puppy; the puppy I had post-menopause, when I thought I was too old to even have another puppy. I mean, I stopped getting my period, like, ten years ago. Or maybe two years ago. I can't remember. I am so fucking tired from the damn puppy I can't think. This morning I brushed my teeth with Moroccan Hair Oil paste. Didn't even rinse. Why bother? 

Now I remember why I was such a bitch when my kids were little. I was EXHAUSTED.

So I'm at the vet for her nine -week shots, sitting in the waiting room with all these other puppy moms. Every single one of them is about half my age and a quarter my weight. They are women who - when asked to put their dogs on the scale that is in plain sight of everyone else in the waiting room - they STEP UP ON IT with their dogs. Yeah, they claim it's because their dogs won't step on it without them, but they are not fooling me. 

People who weigh themselves for sport are a category unto themselves. A category of folks who, let's just say, will not be joining the rest of us up at the big Bed, Bath and Beyond. And people who weigh themselves for sport in public, and then say shit like, "Omigod, look at this! When I am on the scale with Bruno and Buster (her two 500 lb Great Danes), the scale says 160 pounds! Can you imagine if I really weighed that much?" Those people? Yeah, well, if I hadn't used up all my vitriol for Michelle Bachman this week, I'd have a lot more to say about them.

The only way I am going to survive this puppy is to raise her like she is my spoiled grandchild. I am too fucking tired to do a good job this time around. As far as I am concerned, she can do whatever she likes -eat whatever she wants to eat, never do her homework, bite the mail carrier and smoke weed in her crate - so long as I can get some sleep at night and watch my stories on TV in the afternoons. 

Oh, and I am going to eschew the dog park this time around, as well. Frankly, I am not interested in meeting anyone else in my life - I hardly get to see the people I already know - and I don't have it in me anymore to stand around and discuss dogs, for fuck's sake. I want to discuss, I don't know, my arthritic knee and why I can't digest cooked tomatoes anymore. 

I will take my puppy on walks in the regular park, however, because I really need to get off my ass once a day. That is the best benefit of having had a change-of-life dog baby.

Well, that, and - from what I remember the doctor said the last time I had a baby - I can't have sex for six weeks.

 

How Can I Tell You To Fuck Off Without My "Fuck You" Finger?

Fuuuuck. I have such a huge "To Do" list. Pobrecita yo. And I cannot get to any of it because I have a broken finger.

A broken finger. My first broken bone. Which probably speaks to the physical risks I have taken in the past 58 years. Or even the physical effort I have put out. When you spend most of your life reading, making snarky comments about other people and day drinking, you don't tend to sustain a lot of injuries. Although once, when I sat down on a super soft sofa, a button flew off my pants and hit me in the eye. It hurt like shit and made a big red mark on my eyeball and I had to go to Urgent Care. Under "describe how the injury occurred" I just left it blank. Fuck them. It's enough that they fucking weigh you when you come into Urgent Care with a bleeding eyeball. Justify that, Kaiser Permanente. Like if I wasn't such a hopeless doughball, I wouldn't have gotten a flying button in my eye from my too-tight pants when I sat down on a sofa.

Oh, wait. Right.

Well, I don't need their judgement at a time like that. "Mrs. Dr. Strangemom, you have a bleeding eyeball. You will have to begin an immediate course of diet and exercise."

Maybe there's something we can cut out of health care - the weighing in part. That could save the health industry a buttload of valuable doctor time, and money could be put back into the economy because, you know, of all the extra food we'd buy just knowing we weren't gonna have to step on a scale when our eyeballs are bleeding.

Note to self: alert Congress. I might have the solution to the health care issue.

That isn't, of course, what the doctor said when I got to Urgent Care. What she said was, "Are you Dr. Strangemom?"

Yeah, she is a blog follower. Very nice woman. Very competent doctor, too. And very gracious, even after I said to her, "um, yeah, all your stories have been really hilarious and yes, you should totally write your own blog, but, well, MY FINGER IS BLUE AND THROBBING AND CAN WE TAKE JUST A MOMENT AND CHECK IT OUT?" And then Robin came into the exam room while they splinted my finger and the doctor and Robin totally hit it off and on the drive home all Robin talked about was how great she was and we should totally have her over for dinner this summer. He didn't say this next part out loud but I heard it nonetheless: Isn't it great how you smashed your finger in the garage door and broke it to pieces because now we know this kickass doctor at Kaiser?

He kinda has a point, but I am not ready to concede to it.

However, there is an upside to My Unfortunate Injury.

I don't know about you, but there is something very ego-boosting for me about having a broken bone. It's like, people see me and think, "there goes a RISK TAKER. Maybe she is an athlete or something." I am all squishy and shit around the middle of me, but I can still rock the running shorts pretty well.

I make sure that I wave my splint around so everyone sees it. Also, I have an impressive repertoire of facial expressions that say, "I am in enormous pain but I am tough."  I even have one facial expression that says, "you couldn't handle what I am dealing with." And one that says, "hey, asshole, that was MY parking space." Because - and here is the best part of my injury - it is my middle finger that is broken and splinted.

Yup. I broke my "fuck you" finger. 

Thank God I still have my voice.