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."
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.
"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 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?
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.
