What's the deal?

WARNING: FEMININE GROOMING IS DISCUSSED!

Why, oh why, oh why can we women not be happy with our bodies?  Why do we obsess over details that other people don't even notice?  Yesterday, on the drive back from Toronto, what did I notice?  My arm hair.  Of course looking at it now in the light of the study it looks fine, but in the natural light coming in through the car windows?  I was  freaking Sasquatch.  Somehow, since the last time I looked at my arm hair, it was much darker and MUCH longer than I recollect.    Not braidable long or anything - that's the upper bikini hair if it doesn't get seen to - but long enough that I could brush it.  Like in a specific direction.  Brush, brush, brush... Now it faces due east.  Brush, brush, brush... Now it faces north-west.

All I want to do is get out the body hair bleach.  See, I'm in a wedding next weekend and I'm wearing short sleeves.  What if, instead of looking at my friend Amber, the stunning bride-to-be, people are so fixated on my hairy arms that their whispered, horrified comments circle the room?  "Did you see?"  "How can she NOT notice that?"  "She's like a macaque!"  And I know that, besides me, no one is going to notice it, except for everyone reading this particular post, who happens to be at the wedding next weekend - in which case, I'm definitely bleaching it today.

We preen, we pluck, we shave.  We gripe, we obsess and moan.  And that figure fault, whatever we decide it to be, becomes the centre of our universe.  Before my high school reunion in 2007, it was the lines on my forehead.  I have smile lines on my forehead.  And you might say Wait a sec!  You don't get smile lines on your forehead, you get them beside your eyes!   I have those too, but these are different and they're on my forehead because I did mask work.  HUH?  When I was MUCH younger, I did The Comedy of Errors with my Shakespeare company in Ottawa.  My eyes were always disappearing when  I smiled, so the director said that I had to raise my eyebrows when I smiled so that my eyes were still visible in the mask.  So that became what I did EVERY TIME I SMILED.  For 17 years that's how I smiled.  And as a result, I had the forehead of a 65 year old woman, or at least, that's how I perceived it.

In addition to the lines on my forehead you see my chicken pox marks and mylasma.

THIS was what I focused on.  OH MY GOD - EVERYONE WILL SEE THESE LINES!!!  So I got botox.  And you know what?  Of the 4 freaking lines on my forehead?  Only the top two smoothed out, so the bottom two were STILL there!  And you know something else - nobody noticed them.   And shortly after that, I started wearing bangs and stopped obessessing about the age of my forehead.

Now (besides the macaque arm hair), I obsess about the lines beside my cheeks. Which are totally fine when I'm smiling because they're supposed to be there, but when I'm not smiling I look like I might have been living in East Germany under a dictatorship for a long while.

There are times I think about getting some invisible duct tape, just at the hair line to pull those back, just a titch.  Not like a face lift, where your mouth then looks like the Joker's - because that's just creepy.  You know, like all those poor 40-something actresses who have had lifts done and now don't look like themselves anymore and it makes me want to rail to the heavens.  I saw Marisa Tomei in The Lincoln Lawyer and she was GORGEOUS!!!  She had lines on her face and was still drop-dead fucking gorgeous.  Smile lines and crinkles and CHARACTER on her face.

Marisa Tomei - looking how a woman in her 40s SHOULD look!

Because that's what we're supposed to have when we have lived life - isn't it?  So toss away your inner critique and try to see yourself through the eyes of your friends, your partners.  We have smile lines, BECAUSE WE SMILE!  Now the frown lines - those - those you can Botox the hell out of - 'cause you shouldn't be frowning so much - just stop doing it.

I'll let you in on a secret.  When I was doing my crazy-ass eyebrow lifting for smiles - I never took a good picture.  Because why?  Because I wasn't really smiling, I was making sure my eyes were open.  My friend Shannon, who recently passed away, never took a bad photo.  Whenever she smiled... she SMILED.  She embraced life and every single time she smiled she made other people smile too.  She was open without worrying about how her eyes looked.  And I know it sounds all crunchy-granola and new-agey - but when she died?  Shannon gave me her smile.  Or at least she made me remember how to use it properly.  So now, when complete strangers comment on my beautiful smile, I know that it and all the attending beautiful crow's feet that come with it?  It really comes from her and from the knowledge that worrying about how you smile isn't really smiling - it's posing.  And you don't want to be a poser in life, do you?

Crushing on the Drag Queen

My life will never be the same!

WARNING - ADULT CONTENT AND MORE THAN LIKELY TOO MUCH INFORMATION - IF YOU'RE A PRUDE - DO NOT KEEP READING.

SERIOUSLY.

I AIN'T KIDDING HERE.

ALRIGHT, IT'S YOUR FUNERAL.

You know it's a good bachelorette party when you come back with a broken baby toe and you fancy yourself in love. Last night was Amber's birthday/bachelorette party.  It was  an existential, gender-bending, re-evaluating my sexual psyche, kind of evening.  It proved to be one of the most mind-expanding nights in my life.  Why Heather, please elaborate.  Did you discover transcendental meditation, or hot yoga?  No, I discovered the true art of drag queens and I shall never be the same.

We went to the drag clubs on Church Street and I saw some amazing performers.  Nikki Chin at Crews and Tangos - stunning, funny, wry, crass, self-deprecating and a great dancer.  And then Vitality Black at Zipperz  who is  a teeny tiny Tina Turner with more spit and fire and fun than you would think could fit into such a little body.
 

The Fabulous Vitality Black

But then everything changed.  Heaven Lee Hytes took the stage.

Heaven Lee Hytes

I found myself transported to an alternate-reality version of Victor/Victoria, with me in the James Garner role, but instead of me lusting after a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman, I found myself lusting, not for the spectacularly stunning drag queen Heaven Lee is, but rather the man underneath the drag queen.  I have NEVER IN MY LIFE experienced anything as psychotropic as what I experienced last night.
I was smitten.  L.U.S.T.  In bold capital letters.  That's right.  LUST.  My mind is still blown, and this is why...   Heaven Lee Hytes  is one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen.  A Lucy Lawless-esque statuesque brunette with piercing blue eyes who does NOT remotely resemble a dude.   She is a goddess in her own right.  A performer who has perfected her craft for a decade and is a paragon in the realization of her stage persona. GORGEOUS.  WITTY.  TALENTED.

But all I could see?  The man.  The man underneath the sequins and pancake and falsies.  The man beneath the scarlet lipstick, eyeshadow and stilletto stripper boots.  I found myself crushing on this guy in the least platonic way of my life.  I looked at him, who I should be calling 'her' out of respect for how brilliant he is at being 'her,' but honestly?  All I saw was the man.  There was something about the breadth of his shoulders that let me visualize him not as a perfect female impersonator but rather as a cross-dressing man.  And for the first time in my life, I could understand cross-dressing and I thought it was HOT.

To quote my friend Big Gay Jay... So there I was, wanting to hump the leg of a drag queen... I was lusting for the tall, dark, handsome, GAY man who stole the breath from my incredulous lungs.  My mind IMPLODED.  Looking at 'her' but seeing only him.  This man had me imagining things.  Dirty, decadent, ridiculously-cliched, romance novel things.  Him, dressed as a highway man in Regency England, his long hair tied back in a black velvet ribbon, sporting jodpurs and riding boots and some sort of great cloak. Riding a frickin' horse.  Preparing to... board my carriage and perhaps steal my... jewels... if you know what I mean.

And what did you do on YOUR Thursday night?

Use your MOM voice!

I am a medical mystery.

"Oh the medical mystery tour, they're trying to make me okay... trying to make me okay..."

You ever feel glad when the doctors tell you bad news?  Like when finally someone says "Oh yeah, your thyroid is completely screwed," there's this weird release of stress with the bad news?  Kind of fucked, huh? Like when my doc looked at my blood results that showed my antibodies were WAY past normal all I could think was, THANK FREAKING GOD!  At least there's proof that I'm not normal - it's not just in my head!  Because even though I knew that I was messed up - there was no tangible EVIDENCE to support that.  And doctors tend to treat you like you're a hypochondriac when the regular lab work doesn't give you evidence to back up your claims.  There's a lot of There, there-ing and Don't you worry your pretty head-ing - the kind of language that can make a woman see every colour within the red spectrum.

And yet, most women don't advocate for their own health.  We would step in front of a bus for our  our children, our partners, our parents - but when it comes to us?  We become little skittish wallflowers; don't want to make too much fuss. I was like that for YEARS with my GP.  He was an asshole.  Truly.  Ex-military.  Terrible bedside manner, treated me like I was a total hypochondriac and made me feel about this big.  Some might say, get a new doctor.  But the thing is, when you live in Canada, in a small town and you already HAVE a doctor - it's nigh on impossible to switch to a different, less assholey doctor.  There's a lot of politicking that goes on.  You're not supposed to poach other doctors' patients.  So I made do.  I complained to everyone (except the Doc), made do and I put up with the bullshit.  Until I didn't.

I had a breast cancer scare.  (I'm FINE.  Honest.)  I was living out of the country when some issues came up so I went to a private clinic and after they saw my previous mammogram results sent down from my Dr. in Canada, they recommended an MRI.  We cut our trip short to come back for the scan.  I made an appointment with the Dr's office and got the requisition and was assured that things would be done.  Three weeks later,  still no appt, and when I called the MRI dept to see when it would be, they told me that I needed a further breast workup first and that my Dr's office should have contacted me a couple of weeks earlier about scheduling and that until they had a request from my Dr, their hands were tied.  So I called the Dr's office and they didn't know what the hell I was talking about - not a clue as to what had been going on.  "We sent files where?  There's a request from which dept.?"

I LOST it.  Barely holding it together, tears clogging my voice,  I said to the receptionist, "THIS IS SERIOUS.  This is serious to ME.  Perhaps I need to find a Dr,  and a clinic, who thinks that my possibly having breast cancer is something to be concerned about."  Sensing my next step would involve picketing their office and possible phone calls to every news media outlet in Canada, they immediately booked my breast workup and I had a consultation the VERY NEXT MORNING with my Dr.

I went in and he gave me Dr. speak about how the clinic and he personally had served me well over the years.... yadda, yadda, yadda... and every time I tried to voice my concerns, he just talked over me.  For a few minutes I let him do it, before I dug deep down inside and pretended that the patient I was concerned about... was my daughter.  Using my actor's voice, I interrupted him.  I said very calmly, "You are not HEARING me.  You need to  LISTEN to what I am saying.  The level of care that I am receiving as your patient is unacceptable and if we cannot fix this I need to find a new Dr who will take me seriously."

And then a miracle occurred.  From that point on, this guy morphed into the best Dr in the world for me.  There must be a great big frickin' RED ASTERISK and a label on my files that says "THIS LADY WILL CUT YOU AND THEN GO TO NEWSWORLD" because now he calls me personally with results, good or bad, he discusses treatment with me, makes suggestions and listens to my concerns.  He LISTENS now.  And from the first time he changed his tune, I have gone out of my way to thank him.  Every single time he treats me with respect and professionalism, I thank him.  He listened to what I was saying and he changed, because I asked him to.  And shit like that?  It needs to be acknowledged. 

So ladies.  Please, please, PLEASE - speak up.  Fight.  Fight for you.  Go to the mat for you, the same way you would for your child, your partner, your parent.  Be your own health advocate.  Take care of YOU.

Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. 

-Ferris Bueller

The Twitching Hour(s)

There is a rule in our house that applies only to me.  I am not allowed out unsupervised between the hours of 3 and 5 p.m.  Basically from after school until dinner time.  If I leave the house alone during those hours, odds are I might not come home.  For whatever reason, my hypoglycemia kicks in REALLY hard in the afternoon.  When we had a Fabricland in town, David had been known to call and ask, "Has there been a red-headed woman in your store, staring dazedly at fabrics for the last hour and a half?"  Me, between 3 and 5 p.m. is kind of like me on 'shrooms.  Colours are very pretty, I want to touch everything and I have no concept of time passing.  Grocery shopping?  Forget about it.  A 1/2 hour shop can take me 4 hours if I enter the No Frills at 3:15 p.m.  "Look!  They have ginger beer now!  This shape feels nice and smooth in my hand.  The bottle is very brown-y"

Every now and again we forget the time and I sneak out before anyone notices.  It's worse this fall because  David teaches out of town now, and I don't have a car during the day.  So far I'm managing household errands by riding my bike most places.

This was my Mother's Day gift a couple of years back.

Except that I can't do a full-on grocery shop using my little bike basket, so when he gets home from work at 3:30, there's still shit I need to do that requires bigger than a bike basket and I'll hop in the car and disappear. David usually sends Rissa to monitor me.  "Make sure your mother comes home.  Take the cell.  If you guys aren't home in 45 minutes, I'm notifying the authorities."

Yesterday, I had to get a bunch of stuff at Staples.  Riding my bike up there usually isn't a hardship, I have a nice white rabbit helmet that makes me pretty freakin' visible and also adds a certain je ne sais quoi to our small town.  I needed to get a whole whack of rewritable cds and other stuff that would have been weighty and I wouldn't want all of that bouncing around in my basket (NOT a euphemism), plus, I was a wee bit stoned from the overdose of Tylenol that wasn't working and when I visualized the trip, this is what I saw:  Horrified bystanders converging upon an ambulance, firetruck and hearse on the bottom of Ontario Street.  "Hey  that delightfully eccentric lady with the rabbit bike helmet got hit by a mack truck when she tried to ride her bike while hopped up on too many Tylenol!  That's her head over there!"  So instead, I did NOT get on my bike.  See that?  Right there?  I was totally using my brain.  I made an executive decision and didn't bike while under the influence.  Gold Star for Heather!

You can't really see, but the inside of the ears are PINK!!!

Which meant that when David got home from work I said, "I'm just going to hop into the car and run to Staples..."

David - eyebrows raised.  "Uh... NO.  You're not.  You tell me what you need and I'll go get it."

My eyebrows scrunched down in a defensive, pouty stance.  "No.  This is my job to do and I can do it myself, you shouldn't have to babysit me!"

"If only that were true my Love."

"It's not your job."

"I'm afraid it is."

Eyebrows even lower on my face, gearing up to true petulance tinged with guilt at involving him in my errands and perhaps some tears at my hypoglycemic helplessness. "I... I..."

"Just stop.  I'll go with you.  We'll get the stuff.  We'll come home.  It'll be fun."

"Like a date?"
 
"Sure, we can call it a date."

"Okay then.  Rissa!!!  Daddy and I are going on a date to Staples!!"

And it's a good thing he WAS with me, because the aisle with all the fancy envelopes?  VERY colourful.

Woman on the VERGE...

WARNING ADULT LANGUAGE IN THIS POST!

I am this close...

I give you fair warning - as I'm typing this I am stoned out of my gourd on extra-strength Tylenol.  I took three.  This may devolve into a rant.

I am loopy beyond belief and STILL in pain.  Shouldn't a drug that advertises it 'relieves pain'  ACTUALLY do it?  Three frickin' Tylenol and NO pain relief.  I know, I KNOW, I shouldn't have taken three!!  I KNOW!!  But what's GOOD here, and what all my nurse/doctor friends should really focus on, is that I DIDN'T take that many anti-inflammatories, because I know that they wreck your stomach.  Even though if I'd taken three extra-strength Advil maybe I would no longer be in pain right now.   I am loop-the-fuckin'-loop stoned, but still in pain.  However, I'm smart enough to know that NOW taking some extra-strength Advil on top of the extra-strength Tylenol (with soy milk and some rice crackers, 'cause you really should have food on your stomach with anti-inflammatories), would be BAD. See, I'm being sensible here!  I will wait a couple of hours, eat and THEN take anti-inflammatories.

Yes, ladies & germs DAY 1 of Heather's period has arrived... AGAIN.  I know, doesn't it seem like it was a mere 23 days ago when I posted a similar rant?  http://whatthepoohdude.blogspot.ca/2012/09/pms-and-grammar-gazpacho.html

THAT'S BECAUSE IT WAS!!!

But you know what?  It could have been worse.  It could have started Saturday when I was prepping for the Stag & Doe, instead of last night.  There.  I have just now found the silver lining that Mom always finds.  Of course Mom never suffered from machete to your uterus menstrual cramps and doesn't believe in PMS.   "Well I never had much trouble with my periods.  On very rare occasions my back might get a little achy."  My Mom is healthy as the proverbial horse and managed to sleep through the re-setting and insertion of pins into her shattered ankle.  "Oh it was a local so I didn't feel anything - I was a little tired, so I had a cat-nap."  I am so NOT my mother's daughter in the health dept.  I imagine that Rissa is praying that she'll take after her Mor-Mor instead of me.  I keep telling Rissa "I'm an anomaly.  Don't be like me."

Exercise can sometimes help.  The treadmill in the office closet is mocking me right now.  "Come on Heather...  Just roll me out and climb on... You'll feel better... "  Oh yeah?  You don't know what you're talking about treadmill.  You're just a stupid  - (I was going to say inanimate object - but you totally can move) - and you don't have a freaking uterus and you're not in pain.  So fuck you treadmill!  FUCK YOU!

sigh 

I'm going to get on though.  'Cause I know if I don't, I won't sleep tonight.  I will grudgingly climb on, but I'm not jogging.  I'm only going to saunter.  I will watch True Blood as I saunter as a badge of irony.  So there.

I ain't 20 any more...

So yesterday I spent a lot of time on my feet.  A LOT.  And those feet were in boots with heels.  Not crazy-high heels, but high enough that when I stopped moving at the end of the day?  I thought I might die.  I'm pretty sure that the balls of my feet exploded.  I might just be walking on stumps now.

How is it that it's only when you STOP that you realize how much your body has betrayed you? Not just the feet - which to be fair had been wearing said boots for about 6 hours and had every right to explode (memorial service later today), but my hips... GOOD GOD my hips!  And my back, and Achilles tendons - which totally relates to wearing the heels as well...  Done... Gone... Kaput.

See, we were dancing.  The regular dancing was fine.  David and I then decided to a little bit of swing dancing.  That's when my hips went. 

Sexy, non?

"Well Mary, I'll tell you...  My hips are giving me such grief.  I can barely get through Flip, Flop & Fly without having a rest break for these old girls."

There's something about the doing the triple step, triple step, rock step ... that bounce on my joints? In heels?  After one song the pain started.  A smart girl would have stopped.  A smart girl would have said, "Thank you darling, but no.  I need to rest now and take some Advil for my inflamed hips."  But swing dancing is so much FUN!  It's about the most fun you can have without it turning into an orgasm. (Although maybe if you kept dancing...)  Some might say that roller coasters would offer more bang (HAH!), but swing dancing has much less screaming, more laughter and lasts longer than a typical roller coaster.   

It goes back to my youth.  I was a gymnast.  Between the ages of 8-16, I was very bendy.  (Steady there boys.)   That's what's done me in.  I have these hyper-flexible joints in my hips and back.  I was TOO flexible, or so the physiotherapists have since told me.   "Oh here's your problem... your tendons don't support any of your joints any more.  Nope, we can't help you with that. By the time you're 60, you're pretty much fucked."  Which is why my back, hips and even Achilles tendons began to betray me as early as my 20s.

But I've figured it all out!  The NEXT time I swing dance?  No heels for me!  I'm going to wear saddle shoes! Or Keds with the rubberized soles all slidey and worn out.  I'll take the Advil first, ice between songs and get David to rub me all over with Traumeel afterward.  'Cause I ain't NOT going to dance.

A little rub'll do ya!

Not for the squeamish...

Okay, seriously.  Acne? I am 44 frickin' years of age!  I shouldn't be getting any.  Peri-Menopause is wreaking havoc with my skin!!  I mean, COME ON!!!  I know my period's coming, but I don't need any extra facial detailing at present.  It's right beside my mouth - the size of... of... I want to say Vesuvius, but I know that really it's only the size of a large pinhead, but it freaking hurts.  Mostly because I've been picking, won't leave it alone and can't get what's in there to come out...  but the pain is real!

And every time I pick, I can hear my mother's voice in my head "STOP PICKING!!!  YOU'LL SCAR!" Her mantra from when I was an adolescent.  Which, just so you know, I totally didn't.  I have four, count 'em FOUR, scars on my face and they are on my forehead and from me scratching CHICKEN POX, not ZITS and that happened when I was 8, and my bangs hide them.  So there.  That's not to say I don't have have lots of other scars, but they just aren't on my face.  I was a terribly accident prone child.

You HAVE to squeeze zits.  You know what it's like.  That feeling that SOMETHING is in there.  Something that if you just squeeze hard enough will shoot out, maybe landing on the mirror as a sebum trophy, maybe not, but almost certainly relieving that pressure under your skin.  Then you dab on a little zit cream and you're good to go, but until that moment of release - it's torture.

I freely admit that the primate instinct in me is really strong.  I'm a groomer.  I'm a picker.  If I am offered the choice between sex and squeezing a really deep blackhead on David's back,  I have to think about it really hard.  (I know!  I know!!!! EEEEEEW!!!!)  I will  TOTALLY choose the sex, but there is a really big internal conflict that occurs within me first.  'Cause the satisfaction that comes from a really good blackhead squeeze?  Unparalleled.  Truly.  Especially the ones where you can squeeze and squeeze and squeeze and ALL THIS STUFF COMES OUT??  Like in one long stringy bit?  (I know!  I know!!!!! EEEEEEW!!!)  But come on... everyone has their thing.  My Mom loves peeling sunburns.  My brother loved to pick scabs.  I have friends who SQUEEEEE!! over stripping wallpaper in one long strip.  My thing just happens to be disgusting on a primordial level.  A level that no one wants to talk about but almost everyone acts upon.  Anyone who says that they don't is lying and isn't in touch with their inner gorilla.

The hardest thing now is that Rissa is getting blackheads and it takes every bit of restraint within me NOT to go at her.  David says I'm not allowed to.  She is out of bounds.  He barely lets me do it to him because he HATES being picked at.   David hates being picked at but he lets me, because he knows that I'm a twisted mess of a girl who has a primate grooming kink.  See that?   Right there?  That's love.  That is how much he loves me.  Oh the glory that is him!!