Sticky Side of Heaven


Please feel free to respond to any of my thoughts. I love interactive discussion!
My e-mail is liltoad2000@aol.com.

 
If you are ever thinking about tripping in a parking lot, falling flat on your face, scraping up your knees and in general losing all sense of dignity, then do it on your way to the doctors office. Hey, why not? Its the best way to fit it into a busy day and still nurture yourself. I was on my way to 'demonstrate my compliance to hospital policy by receiving all necessary poisonous injections', it was early in the morning and I had a busy day planned. I’m so glad my coffee container is shatter-proof, my pants are rip free and I have no dignity in general. Anyway, I limped into the dr's office and got all the tender loving care I could hope for. Wellll, the nurse didn't exactly kiss my knee but she did recommend that I use the tape and gauze rather than a Band-Aid so I wouldn't rip all the unshaven hair off my knee. ('Oh my!' she said when she saw all the hair.) I realized immediately that this might potentially be a good reason to shave, kind of like the admonition of always wearing clean underwear in case you have to go to the emergency room. "Always shave in case you have to get your knee bandaged up." What on earth do men do with all that hair on their legs? Poor things! I also pity men in that they will never know the joy of wearing nylons. Although there are a few enlightened men out there who have realized this, they won't tell the rest of them for some reason. I doubt that is popular fodder for the locker room discussion. "Hey dude! Nice toe seam!" "Man, I need a good pair of control tops, this jelly roll of mine is doubling over...do my legs look fat?" If someone would just suggest that nylons under pants are a great way to keep warmer during the winter months, maybe it would catch on more. Wait a minute, isn't that the function of leg hair? Have we women got it all back asswards? Keep the hair, ditch the nylons???

I wish I could go back in time and tell all those '30's flapper girls that they were going astray major when they started wearing hose just so they could shorten their hemlines and still say their legs were covered decently. Then I'd go talk reason to the people running WWII when they requisitioned all the nylon (which is suspicious anyway, there weren't that many women in the army to use up all that nylon, the men must've been keeping warm). So then, the women started to shave to make it look as if they were wearing hose. After I finished with the war, I'd yell for a while at the ditzy women who went back to wearing hose but kept shaving!! Nuts! Don't get me started on Coco Channel and the anti-mushroom, pro-cancer craze she started, the hussy!! Made us all miserable!

Anyway, that wasn't meant to be a rant but I guess it was, how quaint. Especially when there are so many more salient things I could rant about. Like UPS for example. I was reduced to chasing the truck around the neighborhood in my car to get my packages, or rather, a promise to deliver my packages. I didn't have any $100 bills to slip him so I tried to give him an eyefull so he might be interested in coming back and in the meantime, actually deliver my boxes. I won't bore you with the intense details of my Herculean struggles with this giant over the past week, but suffice it to say that after three days of arguing with them, I actually asked them to send the boxes back to where they came from so I could have them shipped via a more accommodating carrier!! They thought that was a good idea! If I hadn't been crazy loco enough to chase a UPS truck like a common dog, that is probably what would be happening right now! Pththth!

I'm liking being on the east coast less and less, even though I am in the western part of New York, there is still very much an east coast attitude here. I've been trying to define east coast attitude for a while now, and the closest I've come is a lack of manners, high-strung personalities, quick to anger, slow to smile or even acknowledge that you exist, and in general a very money-grubbing and scamming attitude here. Take for example the guy with tinted windows on his car who had to reach across and open the passenger door just to yell at another driver and make sure this guy knew how angry he was, and the supermarkets, good grief! They are a free for all! If you get in someone's way, which is constantly the case, you will get some rather nasty looks. I've had people act as if I'm not even there and physically displace me. Everyone is in a hurry, hurry here hurry there! I went to the emergency room with Will, waited for 4 hours, saw the doctor for 5 minutes (literally!) and took home a $370 bill and me with no insurance! Grrrrr! Don't ever ever be a penny short or a second late around here!!

Now, I cannot write that last paragraph without giving a nod to all those here who are truly kind and graceful. Who bring joy and music into Will's life and mine. People out there deliberately act against this overwhelming tide of bad attitude and go out of their way to be exceptionally kind. I do try my darndest to be one of these people. It is hard sometimes when the pressures are getting to me and I really do need to be in a hurry. I may lose my manners but I rarely lose my smile in any kind of direct human contact. I find it immensely difficult to look someone in the eye and not smile or not acknowledge his or her presence. Have you ever seen someone who can be going about their daily life and look right through you when you approach them? What kind of a world do these people live in that has trained them to be this way? What kind of experiences must a person have to think "don't smile or nod because *this* might happen," whatever *this* is, I don't know. All I know is that when I'm interacting with someone, I'd like to have some acknowledgement that I am alive. I like to have a dialogue with someone, not a monologue, I don't want to talk to myself!! I want to talk with you and I want you to talk with me. Sigh.

On the home front, Will has gone to bed at 7:30pm for three days straight with NO fuss. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned it, now it'll break the spell, I'll knock on wood! His temper tantrums are becoming fiercer. I'm getting better at ignoring him but it is having an effect on me, I become exasperated easily, but I don't let him know that! He is starting to talk more, repeat more and sign more. You should hear him trying to wrap his mouth around 'bumblebee' or 'helicopter.' So cute! We stayed home last weekend, except for church and a store run. I think he got mighty tired of hanging out with mom :( Oh well. We carved a pumpkin, which was not wholly a pleasant experience as the inside 'guts' were completely rotted. I can still smell it. Took me two hours to scrape all the mold off the insides and then boil it out. We had a pretty cool pumpkin in the end and its been outside rot-free ever since. Not sure if it will last till Halloween...keeping my fingers crossed. Will likes being up on the counters while mom works and will often bump his head on the overhead cabinets. He'll turn around and firmly say "No!" while pointing at the cabinet corner. I constantly have to swallow smiles. Good thing cause with all the coffee I drink, I really should have ulcers. I think the smiles counteract the effects of the caffeine.

Will LOVES wet wipes and will demand one and cry until he gets one. I made the mistake of trying to take him out of the bathroom before he had a chance to wipe down the shelf with his wet wipe, tantrum!

I bought him a potty-chair. He promptly removed the seat and sat inside the bucket as a proper man does (the seat up or down debate, I guess). Loves it, especially the stepstool aspect where he can now reach the sink to play in the water...horrors! This kid will play in water until it has evaporated! Never mind running water! He enjoys copying my morning routine, including putting my eyeliner on. He misses the mark by quite a bit, carefully applying a liberal amount to his chin on top of the layer of chapstick already there. I keep meaning to go to the store and put together a basket of tiny 'man' things for him to play with in the morning, a bottle of diluted aftershave, a comb, an empty razor (is that all????? or am I missing some secret male morning ritual? a small pair of nylons?) He already has his own toothbrush and screams for more toothpaste after the first bit is chewed off. He patiently ignores my offers of floss. I'm not keen on mouthwash. It ruins my morning coffee, so we don't do that. He loves my Oil of Olay and will smear it all over his face. He gave me my foundation brush while I was in the shower the other day, I tossed it on the bath rug only to find it back in my makeup case!!! He had to climb off the toilet and back on again to put it back. The daycare staff tells me that he is constantly putting the toys away.

I'm actually becoming more of a neat person as I've settled into my house, believe it or not. Every night I pick up everything before I go to bed and (Nana will love this part), I always look around before I go up or down the stairs so I'm never empty-handed. This is mostly due to the ultra squeaky stairs, which I avoid using as much as possible. I constantly wipe off the counter and clear the sink. I'm becoming someone I don't recognize! This really struck me the other day when I went into a alternative cafe for a cup of coffee. The person who waited on me had more rings in his body than anyone I've met, he was an Ozzy Osbourne wannabe. But he was nice enough and brewed a fresh pot of coffee for me (their slogan for their coffee was 'don't complain about our coffee, you will be old and weak someday too.') As I was saying before I love to make connections with people and his style didn't turn me off, I grew up with it. But I became acutely aware of how I must look to him, a middle aged professional getting a cup of coffee in a joint that doesn't typically serve coffee. 'She's got it all wrong' he thinks, ' and couldn't possibly understand someone as far out as I am.' He didn't really want to make eye contact either, but did out of a sense of necessity, I could tell I didn't make any other kind of personal human contact with him. I wanted to show him a hairy ankle and say 'I'm alternative too! We're not that different.'

You know what I find funny. Thinking of people in their socks and undies only. Its a great equalizer, even more so than the nude idea and its a little more classy that the 'on the john' visualization. There are still people who look great nude but I'm betting that there are even less people who look good in just their socks and underwear. All of those people are currently featured in Victoria's Secret catalog, so don't get any fantasies that you might be one of these elusive people. Imagine, if you will, George 'W' Bush in just his skivvies and socks. No more leader of the free world, just plain old Bush. Imagine your boss while he's sitting there lecturing, as they inevitably do. And you get a picture that is, I find, funny and a little sad, but always equalizing. They don't seem quite so important. Hair everywhere, especially the unshaven kind, and saggy areas of neon white flab. Sorry, Coco, not everyone gets an even tan all over. This train of thought comes about because I would be mortified if anyone saw me in socks and undies (sorry Will). I can empathize 100% with everyone I imagine in a similar state of affairs (or undress) and it helps me to relate to them. Not as a more sophisticated person, but as someone in this great big boat of life who is going along with them for the ride. It helps me to realize how ridiculous it is to worry about what other people think, because I can guarantee you that someone out there has visualized me in my BVD's. (I feel sorry for them actually) Anyway, to fritter away my precious life with how I will present to people is more than I can bear. I'm not going to spend countless hours of my life balanced on one foot in a slippery tub shaving insignificant hair off my legs, not to mention bits of skin, to avoid the possibility that one morning after glancing at my knee, a nurse I don't even know will say "Oh, my!" Wanna bet she was thinking of her own stubby knee?

posted by Candice at 8:04 PM