A Charmed Life

A Letter To My Body

**If this were called "A Letter to my Brain", I could talk all about our tendency toward procrastination and being a "last-minute Charlie", like Mom always said.  It's the last day of the BlogHer "A Letter to My Body" project, but better late than never, right? Also, this is very tongue-in-cheek humor, I often poke fun of myself to get a laugh but no-one is laughing harder than me**

Dearest Bod,

Can I call you Bod?  Of course I can.  You might control the sugar-sucking metabolism, but I still call the shots around here.  We were born on September 15, 1971, so that makes us a persnickety, organized Virgo, so let's start at the top and work our way down, shall we?

Hair.  Oh, boy.  Why didn't you want to stay that beautiful golden shade of blonde?  It would have helped me explain away so many ditzy moments of our life together, like that time on the Air Force base that I heard a plane fly overhead and remarked that "we must be in a flight path".  But no, you had to go all dark and mousy on us.  And what's with the spiral curls?  Where the heck did we get those?  But you're very fine and silky and soft.  It was a little annoying in college when strangers would pat my head and exclaim, "your hair is so SOFT!".  I always wanted to reply "Your hands are so FILTHY!".  But thank you for covering my scalp completely so that I don't have to wear hats.  I hate hats.  But then, you already knew that.

Eyebrows.  First you were bushy, now you're thinning?  Get with the program, OK?  And quit yer squawkin' when I have to pluck some of you. Either stay in formation or you're out of the program.  But, you know, thanks for being so expressive, especially since I have no luck batting..

Eyelashes.  Short and sparse would have been bad enough, but straight?  And blonde on the tips?  What, did you not consult with the hair, first?  Still, you do a nice job of keeping dust out of my..

Eyes.  Ooh.  Large and hazel-green with thick dark blue rims around the irises.  We've gotten one or two compliments on our peepers in our day.  Unfortunately we can't always tell where they're coming from because we are as blind as a bat.  That's OK, because we have a phenomenal sense of smell, thanks to our large..

Nose.  Hmm.  I'm not sure if we've quite grown into you yet, which is bad news since apparently you will stop growing somewhere around...never.  Roman, heroic, aquiline...the only thing we won't be called is late to dinner, since we can smell it cooking a mile away.  But because of this we love food, it's music to our..

Ears.  A little big, aesthetically speaking, but Hair has got that covered.  And it's nice to have plenty of room for a double piercing.  We also have great hearing, which is a relief, since with our vision we can hardly read..

Lips.  Definitely our best feature, full and naturally red.  Naturally adept at smooching and singing music, which we all know hath charms to soothe the savage..

Breast(s).  Or should I say, (o) (o)?  I have a question for you two.  Why, oh why, did you wait to show up until I was most of the way through high school, when it was too late to snag a date for the prom?  Of course then you had to go all zero to sixty on us.  That wench Lor* H***on hung our bra on the flagpole at Band Camp for being flat and suspecting us of stuffing.  Here's the deal- when we get to our 20-year reunion, I'll spin around fast and you guys whip her upside the head with our FF-cups.  We'll kick her..

Ass.  Hmm. Well, you are really comfy, especially when I'm sitting here blogging away. And as much as I've always thought you were a little...well, not so little?  We've never gotten a single complaint.  And you are starting to look a bit fetching in our running pants.  So let's just work on that cellulite, OK?  There may not be much room left in my jeans but there is always room for improvement.  No time to..

Waist.  First off, thank you for stretching and expanding to fit a baby underneath, and snapping back again afterwards. And thank you for responding to our diet so well and shrinking back into a respectable jeans size.  But can you please have a convo with the abs and work out a plan for that belly button love handle of ours?  Then all we have to worry about is our..

Legs.  I'm sorry you're so sore.  I hope the bubble bath after our run helped you feel better.  I'm so proud of you.  You're helping the rest of us get so much healthier, and by running that marathon, we might be able to help other people get healthy again, too.  You were gettin' kinda chunky for a few years, there, but you've made a great turnaround and are starting to look like the long, lean stems I remember from year ago. That's quite a..

Feet.  You've come a long way, baby.  You started out clubbed and trapped in plaster, but look at you now!  All pedicured and polished and stuffed into extra-wide running shoes.  I promise to buy you a cute pair of slingbacks after the race.  If we have any toenails left, that is.  I swear, they'll grow back.  I know, I'm always telling Hair that, but this time, I really mean it.  And I'm sorry about the washer landing on our toes like that.  The important thing is that we're better now and we're going to cross that..

Finish Line.

You Can Leave Your Hat On

My husband is probably one of the least materialistic people I know.   Which is why I was so surprised to find how attached he is to his hat.  It's not an expensive hat, just a regular Outback-style model that we picked up at REI one day, but to see how much he likes it, you'd swear the thing had superpowers. Think Frosty the Snowman and "Happy...Birthday!". When Seph was a baby and would grab it while we were out at the store to play "peek-a-boo" with it, he'd take it away before she could drool on it.   You get the idea.  He rarely ever leaves the house without it. Hey, I'm not knocking it- I will probably get skin cancer long before he does because I refuse to put anything on my head.  (Oh wait, I have hair..)  I only have one problem with that hat.

He hangs it on my knee.  He drives, I ride shotgun, and before the key hits the ignition I am a human coat hook.  It's not so bad, really-  unless I'm wearing shorts or a skirt.  But since he gets twitchy if the hat falls to the floorboards and gets crumpled, and my knee was obviously put there to prevent that from happening, I like to tease him about it.  This past weekend, as he festooned my femur with said fedora (I'm sorry, it's late and I have weakened resistance to alliteration), I asked him, "What would you do if my knee weren't there?", to which he promptly replied, "then I could put it on the seat!".  Not to be outdone, I retorted, "Well, what if I didn't have a knee??".  "Then I would hang it on the stump of your leg."

Ladies, this is what happens when you marry an engineer from Iowa.  Don't say I didn't warn you ;)

All Groan Up

Today has been a rough day.  I haven't been posting here much because I haven't wanted to spread my stress around.  Or, maybe it's because writing things down make them more real, somehow.  In any case, I started out frustrated and upset, wanting to file this under my "a gripe a day keeps the shrink away" heading.  However, upon thinking about it, I realized that the things in life that bring us the most pain often stem from those that have brought us the most joy.  It's partially what led me to start this blog in the first place- to work through the grief of losing my mother and remembering my happy times with her.  This "Love Thursday", I want to talk about someone I rarely mention- my dad.

My mother was an even-tempered woman: cheerful, mellow, non-confrontational, a peacemaker who was always concerned with making everyone else happy.  It must then be true that opposites attract, because Dad was (and still is) moody, fiery, dramatic, passionate and very temperamental.  Mom told me to her dying day that of us three children, I was the most like him.  I would have taken it as an insult except for the fact that she loved him so madly that I supposed she didn't think I was so bad, either.  (As a result, I am a people-pleaser that gets really pissed-off and moody when I can't please everyone!)  It made for a pretty rocky relationship with my father, growing up.  It didn't help that he'd grown up the son of a blacksmith and had learned how to pack quite the wallop during a spanking.  He wasn't raised in this country, and believed in and practiced corporal punishment a little too often, too hard, and too long.  I definitely still have some issues about it, and it's definitely impacted my relationship with him to this day.

Which is why it's so ironic that I'm now my dad's Durable Power of Attorney and basically responsible for making his decisions for him now that he's incapacitated.  (I dream all my life of having a super-power, and I get Power of Attorney?  I need to complain to Management.)  I got a call today from one of his doctors, who's a blood cancer specialist and wanted to know if I wanted him to pursue a bone marrow biopsy, given my dad's advanced age and quality of life.  Dad never made out a living will, so I got to give his doctor the DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) order for his medical file.  The question "if his heart stops, do you want us to revive him?" should never have to be heard before breakfast.  I had no way of asking Dad what he wanted or even of being sure of his comprehension or response if I did, so I made the choice for him that my mother had made for herself, assuming and hoping that they'd been of one mind on this issue as they had been on so many others.   I still felt like a heel after hanging up the phone, like my dad  was a dog that I was electing to put to sleep rather than incur a large vet bill.

I did a lot of crying today.  I thought about all the times my dad was unbearable for me to live with. When I was little and would talk back to him, he'd smack me across my smart mouth with his leather slipper. When I was a teenager, and had acne on my forehead that I would pick at, he used to make a beeline for me the instant I got home, lift my bangs and lecture me on my zits. When he (mistakenly) thought that I'd slept with my college boyfriend, he flew into a rage that his daughter had been dishonored and threw me into a wall.  (My mother threatened to leave him for that one.  I left home instead.)  He was rude to my husband and caused me to not speak to my mother for almost five months when she didn't take my side in the argument.  (How was I to know his behavior was the Alzheimer's starting to rear its ugly head? Or that my mother would be dead less than two years later and I'd never forgive myself for all that wasted time?)  Now that he was old and frail, he couldn't hurt me anymore, and I was in charge.  Right?

Then I cried so hard I started coughing again, from the bronchitis I've been getting rid of for the past three weeks. And I remembered the daddy I adored, who took care of my every winter when I was little and would get bronchitis so bad I missed weeks of school. I wasn't allowed dairy products but he would take pity on me and give me sips of milk, and pour honey on my toast instead of butter. I thought of the dozens of audiotapes he made of my brothers and me because he loved the sounds of our voices.  Of the bedtime routine when I was small and he'd talk to me in Italian.  I only remember, "Buona notte, sogni d'oro, ciao ciao ciao", or "good night, sweet dreams, see you later".  I remember that he always said his babies had the most beautiful skin, and how he used to brew strong, cold black tea to gently pat on our sunburns. Year later he would buy lemons and cut them up for me to use on my acne.  (It burned like hell, but it worked.)  And when I cried to him several months ago that I was having marital problems, even through the fog of his dementia, he said, "Remember that I am always your daddy, and I will always love you".

My cell phone is back to being on at all hours in case the hospital calls.  Dad's infection is under control at the moment, but he's still getting fevers so he'll be there for awhile.  No matter what happens this time around, I know that someday, I'll be the one who gets that call telling me to get on the next plane. It's a dirty job, but so was cleaning up after a sickly, phlegmy little girl.  The really dirty job is the one where you have to be a grownup.  From experience, I can now say that that doesn't fully happen until you can't be the child anymore.  Also, that it sucks. 

But, I am always his baby girl, and I will always love and protect him.  As unbearable as I found him to live with, it will be unthinkable to live without him.  Happy Love Thursday, Daddy.  Buona notte. Sogni d'oro.  Ciao, ciao, ciao.

Pails, By Comparison

I know it's a little late for a "Mommy Monday" post, but I figure, it's still technically Monday, I'm a mommy, and I have to stay up late anyway.  Baci's housebreaking is in progress, and although I don't mind setting an alarm for the middle of the night to take him out to do his business, I don't want to set it for twice in one night.  So I've been going to bed late and splitting my sleep into two shifts.  I'm tired, but it beats having to clean dog pee out of a crate.  He's been a good boy and doesn't seem to like being dragged out of bed at four in the morning any more than I do, so maybe he'll decide to learn to hold it sooner rather than later.

I got the idea for this post after finding an old pocket notebook of mine the other day.  It has a pug on it (our other dog, Winston, is a black pug) and was a stocking stuffer from Dave the Christmas of 2005.  I guess I hadn't used it much, because only two of the pages have writing on them.  The first one has the phone number of the Sarasota County Sheriff's Dept. on it.  I hadn't thought about that in two years...I remember hearing that my mom was critical again on Christmas Eve, and I needed to contact my uncle, her estranged brother, in a hurry, and didn't have his home number.  I remember dialing the department as I was walking into a holiday party. 

The writing on the second page is a little more bittersweet- it's the last game of Hangman I ever played with my mom.  We both loved all kinds of word games and it wasn't uncommon for us to play Hangman on a napkin while out to lunch together.  I always made her laugh by drawing hair and clothing on the little man to give her more chances to guess the word.  This one has one shoe on already, and it was only a five-letter word: F-U-D-G-E.  As in, the only dessert Mom ever royally messed up. The family saying was, "please pour me a glass of fudge".

Long story short, finding that notebook made me think about all the things I'd like to do before I die.  As in a bucket list, or what you'd like to do before kicking the bucket.  I haven't seen the Jack Nicholson/ Morgan Freeman movie on the subject, but it's an intriguing idea.  Except for the bungee jumping they supposedly do.  Why does every dying person in a movie or TV program want to go bungee jumping?  I don't want to soil myself on the way down, only to have to face my best friend with that when they haul me up again. I want to be remembered with my dignity intact, thank you.

Without further ado, here's a sampling of my Bucket List, or what I would do/try to get away with if I had a terminal illness and only a few months to live:

1) Find the whitest, sandiest beach with the clearest, warmest water and park my bikinied behind there for at least two weeks.  Massages daily in one of those thatched huts by the water.  Eat fresh fish, pineapple and consume many frozen drinks.  Care not for how the bikini fits after all those drinks, because I am a dying woman and everyone else can just kiss my ashes.

2) Load up with music, books and snacks, and take train ride all the way up the Pacific Coast to Alaska to see the Northern Lights.  Hope that the bloodthirsty mosquitoes attacking me catch whatever terminal illness I have.

3) Rent expensive luxury convertible and drive cross-country.  Pick up BFFE's along the way and stop at greasy spoons and Grand Canyon.  Calories not an issue, because again, am dying woman here.

4) Get exceedingly drunk in country-western bar, line-dance, and ride mechanical bull.  (Seriously, I have always wanted to try this!  I am far more likely to need the drink to dance than to ride.)  Emerge unscathed because have had forethought to fatten up behind ahead of time for softer landing.

5) Drive to my old hometown. Track down the girl who hung my bra on the flagpole at Band Camp and humiliated me senior year, and stuff her in the trunk of my luxury convertible.  Enjoy long, leisurely lunch at genuine East Coast diner before leaving car in long-term Airport Parking.  (OK, I'm joking. Long-term parking is very expensive.  And she probably wouldn't fit in the trunk anyhow. Meeoowww..)

6) First-class flight to Italy.  Gorge self on chocolates in Perugia. Take side trip to Assisi and ask St. Francis to save me a spot in Heaven next to my dogs. Buy owl for my collection.  Hey, not dead yet!

7) Take death-defying car ride down Amalfi Coast, or ski lift from northern Italy into Chamonix, France, depending on the season and which one feels scarier. Calm nerves with cannoli.

Hmm...now I'm really tired, and extremely hungry!  I'll have to think about the rest of my list later.  In the meantime, how about sharing an item from your bucket list?  Consider yourself tagged if you want to be- just post your links!  And, don't forget to hug your mom today!

He Ain't Nothin' But A Brown Dog

Can you guess which one of these cuties is my future running buddy?  Well, near future, anyway!  I'd like to introduce "Baci!"  He's a nine week-old chocolate Lab mix puppy that we adopted from the Helen Woodward Center.  For all of you unfortunate non-Wop readers, "baci" is Italian for "kisses", and also the name of a scrumptious chocolate-hazelnut candy by Perugina.  I figure there are probably about a million chocolate Labs out there named "Hershey", plus I kind of thought that giving him an Italian name was a nice homage to my Italian greyhound.   

So, you know how they say pets and their owners look alike?   My neighbor pointed out that Baci's fur and my hair are the exact same shade of brown.  We both have hazel-green eyes.  And on his white markings (face, chest and paws), he has little brown spots.  I'm covered in beauty marks.  The resemblance ends there, though.  I don't typically have people crowding around me telling me how cute I am.  However, I do have much mintier breath.

Oh, and he already adores Seph (and it's mutual).  And have I mentioned how cute he is??  Happy Love Thursday!

TMI Elmo

This week's Weird Wednesday thought is a short one but perhaps blessedly so.  I like to think of myself as a creative and imaginative person, but the truth is, nothing I could ever make up to post on this blog will ever come close to being as strange as, well, the truth.  Some people have an ear for music, or an eye for color...I seem to have a "Spidey Sense" for Teh Strange.

I was rifling through the Craiglist ads today under "Wanted".  I'm too busy to hold a garage sale and too lazy to post items for sale.  I've had much more luck looking up what people want to buy, and then checking my attic or garage for the corresponding items. I'm sure I don't have what today's weirdo was looking to purchase, however: an adult-sized Elmo costume.  Thanks to this freakazoid (and to be fair, also partially to the Sprout Network), I've had the "lalalala, lalalala, Elmo's World..." lyrics earworming through my brain for the last several hours.  I welcome the pain, because it keeps me from having the attention span to wonder what one would actually do with (or in!) an adult-sized furred ensemble.  I almost want to post that I have one, just to see what kind of person would actually show up to buy it. 

Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?  'Cause I would hate to end up there by accident.

Who Was That Masked Mom?

Picture it...Sicily, 1987.  It's "Carnevale", Latin for "farewell to meat", better known as Mardi Gras.  A young girl is invited to her first costume party, and inexplicably decides to dress up as a roller-skating waitress.  Yes, that's a fifteen year-old me in the black shirt with white piping and paper cups taped to a tray.  Thank goodness our neighbor's floor was tile and not carpet.  Also, wearing roller skates kept me from having to do the thing that terrified me the most- dance!  I still don't know how to stop while skating (unless you count rolling towards the nearest wall with my arms outstretched), and I'm still scared to dance.

To my right is standing my otherwise debonair father.  My mother kitted him out as a Tunisian street vendor.  I should add that there is no ethnic slur intended here- in Sicily, at least when I lived there, the Arab Tunisians were their own culture and very different from the Italian citizens. Plus, I claim Tunisian ancestry through two of my great- great-grandparents on my dad's side.  That is apparently why my brothers and I have uncontrollably curly hair.  Actually, if you look closely, my dad's hair is gelled for the occasion to get it to curl more.  So yes, he's poking a little fun, but there's no offense meant.

The real laugh here is Mom's costume.  After coming up with ideas for outfits for my dad and siblings (I came up with that genius train wreck all by myself, thank you!), she was fresh out of inspiration.  So she decided to go as an accident victim.  She rounded up every Ace bandage in the house, fashioned a sling for her arm, threw a bathrobe over the whole thing and hobbled across the street to the neighbors' party on crutches.  The other women in the room, however, were wearing beautiful, elaborate costumes with fancy feathered masks. Talk about adding insult to injury!  But Mom was nothing if not a good sport, and I personally think her satin-accented mask adds some much-needed panache to her ensemble.  Although, it really clashes with the plaid bathrobe.

So, what are you doing for Mardi Gras?