Let's Face It

So, you know how I'm a total hypocrite, right? Well, it's come home to roost. It's come home to roost in the two enormously gross laugh line grooves in my enormously gross face. I could hide stolen jewels in those fucking laugh lines. I could hide bands of partisan fighters in there.  

I really do want to let my inner light shine and love my flabby, aging body. But it's a whole lot easier to do that when you are young and toned.

Pass the coffee cake. I have a story to tell.

I taped the first two episodes of my parenting show.

Lest you think I have buried the lead, I assure you I have not. My career as a parenting consultant is entirely bogus and was created solely to have something to tell people when they ask how my writing career and my singing career are going. If you give people enough confusing and superfluous shit to wade through ("You're a what, now? A parenting what?"), they often lose track of their train of thought. Which is what the hell did she ever make of her degree in Ethnomusicology of The Balkans, and why the hell does she even have a blog?

So my parenting show.

I have paired up with my friend, Amy, who is a real live Ph.D in psychology, and who supplies the data, the credibility and the actual answers. I supply the wisdom of experience, the snarky commentary and the Scared Straight cautionary tale to eat right and get plenty of sleep before it's too late. I look like I'm blowing up a balloon the whole time. I look like the love child of Shrek and Ned Beatty. And my nose was running.

Here's the deal: selfies are the ultimate megalomaniacal vanity vehicle. They made me believe I was photogenic. But, try as I did, I could not convince the camera people at the studio where we taped the show to hang the cameras from the rafters for my close-ups (the ONLY acceptable angle) or to shoot my whole body so as to show my decent legs in balance with the alarming tsunami wreckage which begins at the southernmost droop of my boob (the Tijuana border, where you can't hide anything you are carrying) to the junction of my second chin at the Atlantis of my jaw line. The moldy marshlands. The territory no one is fighting over. The part of my body my eyes ignore when I recklessly catch my reflection in a window. The part Sarah Palin can see from her house.

As  my sixty-first birthday fast approaches, I regret that I did not spend more time on a flab-distracting personality. At this point, a few bon mots and large earrings just aren't cutting it. Maybe I need a tic where I bitch slap the person next to me every few minutes. No one would be walking away from me talking about my chin.

Or they probably would. "I just got bitch slapped."

"By whom?"

"That person, that blogger parenting consultant singer, you know."

"No, I don't."

"The one with six chins and a receding hairline."

"Ohhh, sure. Everyone knows Dr. Strangemom. She sure let herself go. Sad."

And yes, I was very sick when we taped. This is true. I had fever and a horrible sore throat and I hadn't slept in weeks and I didn't even wash my hair that morning. But how many times can I have that disclaimer running under me during a 30 minute segment?

Seventeen times. I did the math.

I have been seriously considering scrapping the first two episodes, so I sent the clip to two trusted friends, Lunaea and Claire, for their honest assessment. They both promptly responded that I look HORRIBLE on camera and that is NOT how I appear in actual reality, and I need to re-do it immediately.

I do look horrible. I thought so. Yay. My cataract-ed eyes are not deceiving me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Madge]

I have been waiting to hear you and now I know why we haven't.

[Maria]

You are beautiful despite all mentioned, I am sure it will be nice when you smile. Interesting you had a writing and singing career, that's so different. I hope your teeth are intact and do people call you granny?.