A reader pointedly asked if I wasn’t being a bit too harsh on the women who attended the Grammys (last entry) and asked me what I would be wearing if I were ever invited to attend the ceremony.
Well, as I have been blessed with the musical aptitude of, say, a sea slug, the chances of my ever being invited to the Grammys are in the "slim to none" category, and I hadn’t given it much thought. I’ll admit that he/she had a point. On the other hand, I do know that even if I had a body that others thought deserved a public flash, I still wouldn’t dress the way a lot of the women did. I’ll admit I referred to them as "whores" because they dressed like whores. Am I accusing them of actual prostitution? No, probably not.
I’d use the male attendees as an example: the vast majority of them appeared on camera looking quite suave, sophisticated, attractive and stylish, and managed to do it without exposing themselves in public. The women would have done well to pay attention to what the men were doing, that’s all I’m saying. The men looked cool, a lot of the women looked like trailer park tramps who never learned how to dress themselves properly.
Take one Sunday this month, for instance: a bright, cheerful, pleasant sunny day. I decided to treat myself to breakfast. Toodled off cheerfully at about 9:30 in the morning. My big mistake: I completely forgot which Sunday it was. By the time I found somewhere to eat where the lines of preening, narcissistic women were LESS than two hours long, I was beside myself, and in a ravenous rage from hunger. I actually returned home at 1:15 pm from an attempt at a 9:30 a.m. breakfast. Yes, I made the fatal mistake of venturing out of doors on [insert orchestral notes reflecting the onset of doom and disaster] … MOTHER’S DAY. After two hours of driving all over the Andovers, Tewksbury, Middleton and god knows where else, looking for somewhere to eat, I ended up at the Lawrence Denny’s. Big mistake … Lawrence, Massachusetts being Ground Zero of "THE PLACE WHERE FEMALES CAN’T DRESS THEMSELVES PROPERLY".
In fact, the City of Lawrence, Massachusetts would probably do the entire world a favor if it were to hold mandatory "Dress Code" instructions for the female residents – since apparently, none of them have even the limited intelligence to understand the concept, given the clothes (if you can call their non-existent covering "clothes") they slithered into to pay homage to themselves. Most of their choices were so disgusting I lost my appetite.
Miles of visible cottage cheese cellulite, dimpled 2 inches thick, crammed into spandex like pork sausage, fat thighs rubbing together so hard they squeaked. More toothless mothers with their sagging breasts hanging out of tank tops. After this vision, another "mother" waddled in wearing the world’s shortest skirt sans underwear, with the underside of her sagging bare rump visible when she bent over, so I guarantee you she left a host of crabs all over the seats in the Lawrence Denny’s. (This was a 50-year old woman, so trust me, half the restaurant turned away to loudly retch when she waddled in). Why Denny’s didn’t enforce even a minimal dress code and order her to leave I have no idea.
Happy Mother’s Day, Lawrence, Massachusetts. You'll be pleased to know you have something in common with the Grammy's. Both stuffed with nauseatingly under-dressed women who need to be far more covered up than they are. I'm still shuddering.
But to continue: finally! After 4 months of misery, a doctor figured out what was wrong, and while it’s too unladylike to discuss in a public journal, I will say that he fixed the problem I was having – and that was darn near killing me - and I’m now back at work.
By "a doctor" I do NOT mean a distinguished member of the Mass General Hospital Medical Staff, who nearly sent me off for surgery which I apparently didn’t need - I mean a surprisingly quick-witted nobody associated with Haverhill and Lawrence hospitals, neither of which rank high with the U.S. News & World Report best hospital rankings, or even in my own personal opinion, for that matter.
He did one test and that was it. I’ll need another test in 6 months to make sure nothing has reappeared where it shouldn’t, but finally, I feel somewhat semi-normal again. Primary Care Physician read the test results and said, "You’re lucky he caught this when he did, or I’d be treating you for cancer." Gee. Thanks again, Mass General …
My future soul mate wll be delighted to learn that all of the potential tooth/teeth problems I could have had after we met are being rectified BEFORE his arrival. No sooner had the post surgical digestive issues been somewhat cleared up than the teeth on the right side of my head started throbbing painfully. Of COURSE they did. Sky Sadist forfend I should have one moment's comfort and peace to devote to the "Search for My Soulmate" project.
Turns out I'd been grinding my teeth so hard during the night that I actually cracked one of them. Emergency root canal. $500 crown and crown lengthening procedure (apparently I have a small mouth which is news to anyone who knows me, since all of them told me I had a big mouth). In the middle of that nightmare, I lost my debit card - AGAIN. My sense of balance was still not good, and I wiped out on the sidewalk - HARD - three times. Cat started projectile vomiting, but I had to put off trips to the car repair shop and to the vet to pay for this ridiculously expensive tooth procedure, not covered by Delta Dental, so what exactly are they good for? I can clean my own teeth, thank you. I needed their help with the major stuff. Love to know what the annual salary of the Delta Dental CEO is. I'll bet it's astronomical, the money they steal from people.
My e-mail account was compromised and all of my friends and acqaintances dropped me notes asking if I was SURE I wanted them to visit the "Old and Ugly Skanky Women Dressed like Catholic Schoogirls" website. (Uh -- no, to anyone who asks - I do not). Caused me so much aggravation I started an "Instant Death Penalty to Hackers" petition - and I wasn't kidding. I ended up on the IP blacklist.
But on a brighter note, it’s Spring, and the best food you want to finally hold down permanently is beginning to arrive: asparagus spears, watermelon, fresh tomatoes … there will soon be fresh produce stands between here and Ipswich and Rowley to buy fresh vegetables right out of the ground and fresh fruit right out of the trees and bushes … any day now the county fairs will start popping up again in New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine … after which the fall harvest vegetables are available … ahhh, corn-on-the-cob …
I personally think we ought to toss Columbus Day out the nearest window and replace it with "The Great Corn Festival", where we all get down on our hands and knees and thank the natives for this heavenly vegetable which originated in Central/South America somewhere as "maize" and developed into one of the most perfect foods in the world. We can make cornhusk dolls to stick pins into … and get three weeks off of work to simply consume vast amounts of corn-on-the-cob! Teach children to sing the "Corn Maiden" song, which I learned in camp one year and still remember, although (trust me!) no one wants me to sing aloud.
The "kneesocks of fire" have diminished slightly to "nerdy kneesocks of fire" (those kneesocks that slide down a girl’s legs until they’ve said farewell to her knee and are now halfway down her calf). I still can't feel my feet, although every once in a while a lightning bolt hits my toes and I squint and moan and hope the intense screaming pain goes away before I start crying in public and it usually does. So here’s hoping that as my spine continues to fuse, the pain in my legs and feet will start to fade away again.
I will admit that when you’ve been out on medical leave having a messed up spine fused and flat on your back (or puking your lungs out) for close to 6 months, the first weeks back are exhausting. Finally I decided to set myself a goal:
Plan A: to be able to walk from the "T" to the Brighton Music Hall on July 12th, and then back again in time to make the final commuter rail train home. Right now I can only walk maybe 100 yards before feeling weak, cranky and whiny. Now why, you ask, would I want to walk from the "T" station to the Brighton Music Hall?
A month or so ago, I discovered that the composers of my recently discovered all-time favorite lullaby were performing in the Brighton Musical Hall. It wasn’t until the tickets had been ordered that I thought to look up the Hall on a map to see where it actually was, and immediately said, "Uh-oh." Visions of Plan B: me splatting out on the pavement and crawling pitifully down a Boston street whimpering, "A wheelchair, a wheelchair, my kingdom for a wheelchair…" danced in my head. Would I make it? Would I collapse? Will I make it to witness a live performance of my all-time favorite lullaby by the classically trained, musicians who composed it?
Okay, I lied. Only one of them was classically trained (Interlochen) - I don't know about the others.
Few bands are worth crawling down a Boston pavement for, and if I can't get my walking stamina up, neither will this one. Not to mention that I'd suddenly had the bright idea to look up one of their live concerts on You-Tube. I had originally perceived tham as fairly laid back musicians. On You-Tube I suddenly heard a heck of a lot of wild screaming. Nothing goes through your head faster and more painfully than a woman screaming like an air raid siren. True, the band is made up mostly of professional actors (all locatable on the Internet Movie Database): Jerad Anderson, Ben Johnson, Ben Graupner, Jackson Rathbone and "Uncle Larry". While it's possible all of the girlish screaming originates from a profound love of movies in general (pause for everyone to raise their eyebrows sardonically), I'm suspecting they may be a victim of the "Twihard" groupies syndrome: Rathbone plays Jasper on the series. He also played Sokka on "The Last Airbender", but I can't see Airbender fams screaming their lungs out.
Which brings us back to the favorite laid back "lullaby" (started out as freebie downloadable from their website and is now one of their most requested songs) - so catchy that you can whistle the tune under your breath the next time your boss or your neighbor - or just about anyone - ticks you off and feel much better almost immediately.
In case you were wondering, this is the band "100 Monkeys", videotaped here by someone who appears to only have the hots for two out of five band members. Ben Graupner is on the left doing his Joker impression, including the scariest smile on the planet and that’s Jackson Rathbone on the right. And then, when your idiot boss suddenly has a PMS attack and starts acting like a demented harrigan, you can quietly whistle this tune under your breath and feel better immediately. And as for crawling down the street to the Music Hall, while I enjoy their music, all of that screaming may keep me away, no matter how my legs feel.
But back to Jackson Rathbone and my search for a soulmate. No, please don't get any silly ideas. I use him as an example of how easily one can confuse the physical attractiveness of a potential soulmate with the personality and thoughts of someone who's just plain wrong for you, and you'll see why. Besides, he's just shy of thirty, but looks much – oh very much – younger, and in fact, rumor has it he recently did a pilot for a TV series where he supposedly plays a high school student, and could probably pass for one – shades of Johnny Depp in his early TV days methinks - which is why I said I only wanted someone who didn't think like him. Anything more than that and I’d be sliding so deeply into cougar territory I’d need a slab of raw meat and a leash.
Or I'd be Hilary Swank, who interrupted one of his MTV interviews to suck on his neck.
Now, I have no problem with Jackson Rathbone as eye candy. Au contraire. Guy is sexy as the day is long, but the problem is, he’d kill me in less than a week, as evidenced by this interview he had with someone named "Gabrielle":
Gabrielle: What are qualities do you look for in women?
Jackson: I look for a woman with a sincere smile and a love of the arts. I love being able to go out on crazy dates, like breaking into zoos after hours, so a woman who has a sense of adventure... but I also love a calm night of jamming on a beach at midnight with a bonfire, whiskey, and friends... so a woman who can hang in any situation and not get too clingy if I'm playing some music and spending time with my friends and family.
Um ... breaking into zoos after hours? This is one man who definitely needs to be sat down in front of a television and shown the old SNL skit where practically the entire male cast threw themselves into a polar bear den and were last seen spouting geysers of blood all over each other and the audience. Yeah – as clutzy as I am and he thinks the two of us breaking into a zoo after hours (read: pitch dark) when I’m half-blind in the darkness is a good idea? Hmm.
Another idea he had in another interview was taking his date out for a lobster dinner, so I’m guessing I’m not BREAKING into the zoo; I’m being chased into the zoo by a hot-water crazed lobster, waving large pincers at me, taking large chunks out of my ankles, and THEN I take the header into the polar bear den and die a gruesome and bloody death.
And we won’t even speculate on my combining whiskey with a large and dangerous bonfire.
So, future soul mate ... take note of this charming man and go the opposite direction with your "first date plans". No zoos after dark, no bonfire-whiskey combinations, no being chased by enraged lobsters. And bring with you a schedule of "Corn Festivals" we can visit, and you're all set.
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