how to raise a diva

A beautiful child is ahead of me in line at the Big Box store. She is approximately 7 years of age, dark hair, striking blue eyes. Freaking adorable. I find myself inclined to smile simply because of her incandescent beauty. And then I hear her scream/whine this:

"I want TWO Kinder eggs!!!"  

The tone immediately pulls back my parental shoulders and raises my "Mummy" eyebrows. I take a calming breath.

Don't say anything Heather. Don't say ANY. THING. Not your kid. She is NOT your kid. Maybe the adult will parent-up. 

I wait patiently. The dad has yet to reply.

He's going to make a good choice. He's got this.

"But sweetie you already have one Kinder egg."

"I want TWO Kinder eggs!!!"

"Now sweetie, what did I just say?"

"I want TWO Kinder eggs!!!"

"Well, you'll have to ask your mother..."

She'll have to...? Did that motherfucker just do what I thought he did? Did he just fucking pass THE PARENTAL BUCK?!? 

"Mummy!  MUMMY!!!"

"What is it sweetie?"

In a slightly less whiny tone. "I want TWO Kinder eggs." No 'please,'  no 'May I have?" 

"You already have a Kinder egg."

"But. I. WANT. TWO!!!!"

I make eye contact with another parent waiting in the line next to mine. We are 1980s Cold War spies. We give each other almost imperceptible head shakes. Present etiquette restricts our ability to act. As long as those parents are not physically or verbally abusing that child in front of us we keep our mouths shut.

"But you already have one sweetie."  

The mother is calm. She won't cave.

"But I want TWO!!!"

"Well, allllllllll right, you pick out one more, but just one..."

What the fuck just happened? Our Cold War spy duo has now become a trio with another parent from the line to my left. You could cut diamonds with our glances. Without saying a word we all know that if that were our child she would not be leaving that store with ANY Kinder Eggs.

Instead, the pocket-sized prima donna rushes to the candy shelf. "Yay!  Barbie Kinder egg!"

Now the father pipes up, "You can have the toy....but I get to eat the chocolate from the second one."

"But I WANT the chocolate too!"

"You'll have enough chocolate with your own egg sweetie," says the mother.

"BUT. I. WANT. IT!!!"

"Oh well, we'll see..."

Oh yeah - this kid's going to be a joy when she's a teenager.

anatomy lessons for aging birds

I do a double-take as I open my elbow. Since when does the skin there look like a plucked chicken?  Like a really old, plucked chicken? Freaking ANCIENT.

"Whoa!  What the....? EEEEEEEEEEEW!"

"What are you doing?" asks Rissa.

"Look at this skin!"

"What about it?"

"My inside elbow looks 90!"

"No it does not."

"Sure easy for you to say, your inside elbow looks like a spring chicken."

Inside elbow.  That sounds awkward. Crook? Inbow? Elbow Pit? Does it have an actual name?  Like a Latin name?  And now I need to know what it's really called so that my irrational haranguing over it can have gravitas.  

It strikes me that if the skin on the outside of your elbow is colloquially called the 'wenis' that would mean that the skin of the inside elbow is dubbed the...

"WAGINA!!!"

Rissa emphatically says NO.

I show her the skin of my elbow.  "Wenis."

wenis

Then rotate my arm so that the interior really old plucked chicken elbow skin is on view. "Wagina."

wagina

 "NO."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Wenis."  Rotate arm.  "Wagina."

"NO.  You're ridiculous."

I feel my logic is sound.

"Fine.  I'll look it up."

Ladies and germs I give you the cubital fossa.

"Fossa cubitalis est mihi senescit."

"You're ridiculous."

"Yes, but I'm ridiculous in LATIN."

DO NOT DIS COHEN

Rissa and I love IZombie.  We love when Liv cooks the brains each episode.  We love when Major's personality transforms after eating mind candy. We love the theme song, the bad puns, the comic panels.

And then Blaine says, "I was singing Hallelujah... the Jeff Buckley tune..." Which is when I lose my shit.

"COHEN!!  IT'S FUCKING COHEN!!!"

"What?" asks Rissa, thinking I've lost my mind.

"He means Hallelujah  written by Leonard FUCKING Cohen! Jeff Buckley did a COVER - a fantastic cover, but it was a FUCKING cover!!"

"Whoa, simmer down there Mama."

"How can they? Grrrrrr....."  grumble, grumble, grumble.

"Mama - seriously it's..."

"No, what if this is like the moment on New Girl when they dissed Birdman and I couldn't respect the writers any more?"

"What if it's just because of Blaine's memory loss that he can't remember that it's Cohen and this is a very in-crowd joke?"

"Then they made the WRONG fucking joke!  Buckley's version is too old.  If you're going to make it a joke for folk-rock fans, they should have said, 'I was singing Hallelujah... the Pentatonix Tune...' which came out 2016 and would have completely let the audience KNOW that it was a joke as opposed to the way they did it, mis-attributing it to Buckley, whose version is, I freely admit, pretty fucking close to perfect, but you don't DENY Cohen's songwriting skills - the dude is a genius!!!  And he's BARELY FUCKING dead!  Even fucking SNL did an obscure tribute to the guy!!!"  snort, grumble, snort.

"Wow," says Rissa. "You weren't kidding when you said you're a little moody with your unexpected period."

There's the possibility that my hormones have hijacked my higher brain function.

Cat Olympics

CRASH!!!

"What the???"  David, Rissa and I all turn towards the laundry closet, from whence the sound emerged.  When had we docked a ship back there and how had it broken free from its moorings?

"What was that?"  We all look at each other, on the cusp of Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spocking  for who gets to discover the damage.

"I'll go," I offer.  I creep towards the area of the ruckus.  The box that holds the dryer sheets and lingerie bags is now on the floor - the accordion drying rack is askew on the wall.   On the stacked dryer sits Lola, the smallest of our cats.  The dryer sits at least 6.5 feet off the floor.  The upright freezer from which she obviously jumped, upon which the laundry accouterments rested, is at least 5.5 feet high (165cm).

"How did you get up there?" I ask.

 "Is that Lola?"

"It is.  She's on the dryer."

"How did she get up there?"

"I think she jumped up onto the freezer and then bounced from there to the dryer."  I look at Lola  "Is that what you did?" I ask.

Lola remains coquettishly silent.  She's our cat who can jump straight up in the air and then insert herself perpendicularly at that ascent.  No scrabbling, no clawing. It's kinda spectacular. 

Or at least I thought it was until I saw this video.  If Lola has a shot at the 2018 Cat Olympics we're going to have to up her game.

I need a groomer...

WARNING: This post doesn't pull any punches.

I need a table set up in my home, under the most natural light possible, where a team of  aestheticians clad in neuroscientist's glasses can groom me every morning. This finding  hair on my face, chin, neck, legs - breasts - at inopportune moments has got to stop.

Hairy breasts throw a girl's groove off. Particularly because the discovery of said hair usually occurs after a boisterous lovemaking session where David has spent a great deal of focus, shall we say, on the breastal region. I'll head to the bathroom to freshen up before sleep and I'll see a looooooooong black hair on my breast. I'm not saying there's enough to floss with, but something a centimeter long does draw one's attention, particularly when I could swear that the hair hadn't been there the day before.

Ditto with the sudden beach side/pool side realization that the hair on the backs of my thighs could have me placed in a "Switched at Birth?" ad for a yeti.

"It's lovely to meet you Prime Minister.  Let us retire to the conservatory for our discussion on climate change ."  Passing the elaborate Rococo mirror in the hall, I notice... Oh MY GOD, I have a mustache - a full on - MUSTACHE, that is only visible in natural light!!!

Just this morning in the bathroom Rissa says,  "Whoa, hold on a sec..." before she then proceeds to pluck a long black hair from my spine.

"How am I supposed to check my frickin' BACK for hair?"

She shrugs.

"You do realize that your going to have a full-time position making me less hirsute when I'm elderly and mostly blind, right?"

"I kind of figured."

"I should get the paperwork on that started."

***

Somewhat related tangent: How do porn stars manage? Sure, they're probably waxed to within an inch of their lives, but why don't they end up with ingrown hairs? Or heat rash? On any given waxing/epiladying adventure, I'll develop at least one ingrown hair, which, when you're as fish-belly white as I am, becomes a throbbing red beacon upon my thigh/breast/neck. Do porn stars have their own team of full-time aestheticians, or am I just over-thinking what porn watchers are really there for?

Those aren't moths.

I'm looking into the back yard.  Big, fluffy snowflakes are falling...

"It's snowing!"

"Seriously?"  The rest of the household does not appear as thrilled with early spring snow.

Strange though - it's only snowing in our yard.

"Wait, they're not snowflakes - they're not just falling down, they're sort of moving in other directions.  Moths?  Are those big-ass moths?"

"There are big-ass moths in the backyard?"

"Weird right?  Are we supposed to have massive amounts of moths at the end of March?"  I say, pleased with my own alliteration.

I look a bit closer.  Now the moths appear bigger and more oblong, like there are families of moths... and they all seem to be flying in from the left side of the yard.

"Those aren't moths."

"What are they?"

"Feathers.  They are white feathers."  I cock my head to the side, considering what I'm seeing.  "There is some sort of bird sitting on the fence, plucking another bird."

"There is what?"

"There is a small bird of prey - like a hawk, or a kestral or something and it is plucking whatever other bird that it caught... on our fence."

David and Rissa come to stand with me at the back door and regard this Mutual Of Omaha moment.

Rissa shudders.  "That's nasty."

David shrugs. "That's nature."

"That is repulsively cool," I say. 

"I have to say I'm a little bit impressed," says David.

"Why?" Rissa asks.  She looks queasy.

"The bird it's plucking is practically its same size. How did it get it up there?"

"Ewwwwwww!" from Rissa.

David and Rissa go about their morning business. I find myself unable to look away from the window. "How is it that it never occurred to me that a bird would pluck another bird to eat it?"

"Because WHY would you contemplate such a thing?"

"It makes perfect sense.  You can't get to the... uh... fleshy... red... bits...."

Rissa looks out the window. "Ewwwwwwwww!"

"...without plucking the feathers away.  That's a determined bird. Maybe it's a chicken hawk!"

"What is a chicken hawk?" asks Rissa.

"I'm a chicken hawk!" I say in my best Henery Hawks accent.

"Ahhh say, ahhh say, ahhh say, son..." says David.

Rissa looks at him like he's nuts.  "What are you doing?"

"Foghorn Leghorn."

"What's Foghorn Leghorn?"

"We've failed as parents.  Quick! Remedial cartoons!"

This teachable moment brought to you by ornithological carnage.

I'd like to thank the Academy...

"We're really doing this?" asks David.

"I'm willing to try anything," I respond.

"All right, lie down."

He pulls the sheet over me before hefting up a weighted blanket.  Filled with 8 lbs of plastic beads, the blanket is deliciously cool against my body despite its weight.

I am forgoing a sleeping pill so that I that the results from this experiment will not be skewed.  If the weighted blanket relaxes me enough and stays cool enough, perhaps the night sweats won't come. Gratified with the sense of well being, I fall into a deep sleep...

Which lasts until my core temperature apparently melts all the little plastic beads and I find myself trapped under a molten weighted blanket pretty fucking sure that I'm being buried alive.

"GAH!!!  OFF!!  OFF!!!"  I kick and claw at the weighted blanket until it falls to the floor.

"Too much?" says David from beside me, reading a book on his phone.

"Too much!  I've melted the beads."

"I don't think that's possible love. Do you want a cool pack?"

"No, I don't want a cool pack!" I say petulantly.

"Do you want me to set up the fan and you can turn it on if you get too hot?"

"NO, I DON'T WANT A FAN!  I WANT TO SLEEP.  NIGHT SWEATS ARE AN EVOLUTIONARY DESIGN FLAW!!! HOW CAN THIS POSSIBLY BE USEFUL TO HUMANITY?!?"

"Would you like..." he begins, grasping at any straw to help ease my discomfort.

I take a breath. 

"I want to thank you," I say apologetically, clutching his hand, even though the feel of his warm skin makes me want to jump out the fucking window.  "I want to thank you for everything that you've done and do for me.  I want you to know that I am incredibly grateful for your support during this trying time, and I will do all that I can to continue to earn your support."

"Would you like to acknowledge the other nominees too?"

"Yes.  And I would like to..." I pause as a wave of heat-induced nausea hits me. I sprint to the bathroom. "GRAVOL!!"

"Take a sleeping pill too," he suggests.

I swallow two Gravol with two glasses of water, trying to recoup the liquids that I've lost through my sweating.  "Do not take any other sedatives with this medication," I yell to him as I read the label.

There's a pause as we both consider what the odds of my overdosing would be if I ingest a sleeping pill after two Gravol.

I climb back into bed.  "I will wait another two weeks to see if the natural herbs begin to work and then I'm going on HRT."

"Yeah?" David says, lying close, but not touching me.  He's been with me for the last 6 weeks. And he was here for the bout of night sweats last spring. He knows, insofar as a man who can't possibly know, what I'm going through. He knows that I'm perilously close to completely losing my shit.

"Yes. If my choice is to go the natural route and not sleep for possibly decades or to take HRT and cut my life short with associated risks to HRT?  I'm willing to give up those years and remain a relatively sane member of society with a sense of humour."

He takes a breath to say something, rethinks, then blows cold air all over my face.

"Imagine," I say.  "Imagine the worst sweaty balls that you have ever experienced.  But this bag sweat is so hot that your hand nearly burns if you touch them.  Those sweaty balls soak your boxers 5 times a night and make you want to puke your guts up every time."

He pales.

"And every time it happens you have a panic attack. Every single time."

"Whatever you want to do love, I'm with you."