cougardom

the wonderful world of cougars, i.e. older women who like to have fun

Everything I Never Wanted, Speak English, and elysianhunter’s Wide World of Sports

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Ok, I am not a sports fan.  Even Dad, unlike the other 99% of heterosexual American males, does not care for sports- unless the word “motor” is in front of it.  Even then, Dad is picky about which motorsports he indulges in or bothers to watch.  NASCAR is too boring for him and I can understand this.  I don’t have the attention span nor the ability to consume vast quantities of alcohol that is required to enjoy NASCAR.  He likes the off road stuff with trucks or rally racing- the kind of motorsports that actually look like they’d be fun to do.  We all like playing with VW dune buggies and such.  But my very limited non-motor sports education consisted mostly of 1. what I learned in gym class before I was permanently excused from gym class due to heart valve damage from rheumatic fever, and 2. what I gleaned from watching my sisters play sports, and from going to high school football games to try to (very unsuccessfully) pick up guys.    Jerry had to explain to me that when the ref in football does that funky dance move- rolling his arms one around the other -it means “false start” (WTF?) rather than “travelling” like it does in basketball.  The only reason I know what it means in basketball is that my sister played basketball, and a basketball game actually moves quickly enough to hold my attention at least to some degree. Travelling is when you just run with the ball and fail to dribble it.  Personally I think just running with the ball is challenge enough, but I don’t make the rules.  Nobody would want me to make the rules.  I indulge in physical activity for its calorie-burning/aerobic exercise value, and then only because I have to.  Let’s not make it overly complicated for the chronically uncoordinated. 

I did not grow up in a normal American household where the males of the species can’t miss a single __________(enter sports team name here) game.  This was quite a foreign concept to me until I met Jerry and discovered that a good part of his life and energy are devoted to watching Ohio State football.   Barring Ohio State football he will watch any two teams play football, whether it be NFL or college or Canadian cross-dressers.  At first I resented his football jones, but now I see a 4 hour long football game much in the same way that a mother sees dropping off her toddler at Grandma’s for the afternoon.  Football is a lovely babysitter.  Especially when I can watch TruTV or Discovery Channel in the other room.  There must be something about drinking beer that makes football interesting because in my sobriety I find it incredibly slow moving and boring.  The minute things get interesting they stop the game, and there’s about 40 bazillion cryptic rules that one can break without realizing it.  Then there’s the funky little dances the refs do to tell everyone someone broke a rule.  I play hell trying to decipher that stuff.  I do know there’s an “unnecessary roughness” call which doesn’t make any sense to me at all.  As far as I’m concerned you can avoid roughness altogether by not playing football.   It’s as if there is an “unnecessary wetness” call in swimming.  Getting wet is just part of being in the pool, right?

Swimming is one sport I can say I enjoy- not in the competitive sense of course, but to me it’s the least offensive form of exercise.  Despite my extreme lack of coordination on land I am a strong swimmer and a fair diver- but I very seldom have access to a pool.  To be a regular swimmer here in Ohio you need access to an indoor pool, and I can’t afford the “Y” membership anymore, which sucks.  If I could afford one of those “endless pools” or indoor spas, I would find it delightful to get my daily exercise in rather than finding it a boring (albeit necessary) chore.  Of course I don’t see that happening unless I end up being on the receiving end of some kind of inheritance from rich relatives that I’m pretty sure I don’t have.   Of course, Bill Gates can always put me in his will, or maybe just spare me a million or two because he feels sorry for a pathetic old uncoordinated cougar like me.  This is not likely.  I can dream though, and the endless pool thing would be kick ass.

As far as sports go it seems some of them have more entertainment value than others.  I can’t for the life of me see how anyone would bother watching golf.  I can’t hit that damned dinky ball with a golf club even if I keep on swinging at it.  Granted it must take some talent to golf (which I readily admit I don’t possess) but it’s still boring to watch.  I may be a bit biased too from working at the Infiniti dealership and having to deal with travelling golfers. Every year during the Memorial Tournament I was stuck having to deal with all the pompous asses from Muirfield who would want their ill or poorly maintained Infinitis fixed NOW.  The Memorial Tournament always brought to my service department a rash of presumptious nouveau riche douche bags who claimed to be more important than the next guy because they have Connections.  Yeah, we know you golf.  We can tell by the bad pants and Hair Club for Men hair.  I really don’t give a rat’s ass you’re stranded and from Chicago.  In my humble opinion, you hould have scheduled your maintenance and had a safety inspection BEFORE you made an ill advised 500 mile road trip and ended up in my service department with bald tires and a busted radiator hose.   By the way, half of the world knows the owner of the joint, so don’t try that one to get ahead of the guy who scheduled his appointment a month ago.  Claiming a blood-brother relationship with the owner of the dealership (who likely doesn’t know you from Adam’s housecat in the first place), and a $1.49 will get you a Diet Dr. Pepper at BP.   Not everyone who golfs  is a pompous ass who hasn’t a clue about proper vehicle maintenance, but annoying individuals of that stripe seem to be overly represented among golfers.   So golf really isn’t my favorite sport.  Golf spelled backward is “flog.”  Watching someone (deserving of it of course) get flogged might be entertaining.  Watching golf is sort of like being a turd in the punchbowl, watching paint dry.

Baseball I really can’t say anything too bad about.  I actually enjoyed going to Clippers games.  Before I got rheumatic fever I played softball (the rec leagues where anyone who buys the T-shirt is allowed on the team) so I understand baseball rules relatively well.  Baseball is one of the very few games that is more interesting to watch than to play.  I understand it is really boring standing around way, way out in left field for half the game and warming the bench for the other half, but I royally sucked at softball and it was only fair that the girls who could actually play got to.

Hockey is another sport I don’t really understand but find vaguely intriguing.  There’s lots of fights.  It’s done on ice skates which puts the hazard factor right up there.  I’ve not been on skates (roller or ice) for a number of years which is too bad, because at one time I could skate at least with some proficiency, but I’m afraid of breaking stuff at my age.  I broke an arm just falling on the back porch last year and I really don’t want to repeat that one.

For the life of me though I don’t get it how so many people get into sports so heavily that their whole world revolves around what ______player or _______team is doing.  I’m just not that much of a voyeur. 

Another thing, besides the insane popularity of watching other people play sports, that I fail to understand, is why do other people think I need crap that I never expressed any desire of wanting, needing or even having room for?  Mom has the best of intentions but sometimes she buys just plain goofy little things I have no use for and no desire to possess.  For instance, buying a diabetic a set of cookie cutters is a tad bit sadistic, no?  I used to enjoy baking cookies and cakes and pies and pastries- when I could eat them too.  Might as well just spring for the cake decorating tips, candy thermometer and double boiler while you’re at it.  I’ll get right on fulfilling your pastry, cookie and other sugary snacky desires.  (insert sarcasm here)

Speaking of sarcasm, or should I truly be speaking of sadism, Jerry has found a new hobby in the evenings and is pursuing it with a veracity that I did not realize he could possess.  It seems ever since I switched the home phone over to Time Warner from AT&T some foreign jackoff keeps calling every single farking night to try to convince me to switch the phone back to AT&T.  Now it already pisses me off that they didn’t want to offer me the primo pricing until after I’d already switched to TW, instead of making the good offer one of the many times when I’d threatened to do it but didn’t.  It pisses me off even more that they want my business (?) but can’t seem to spring for sales help who speak English intelligibly and preferably as a first language.  I know plenty of college kids who speak at least intelligible English who would be willing to work for relatively cheap for a few hours a week.  (dammit Steve-o…get a freaking job…)  I don’t like to torment foreigners.  I prefer to ignore telemarketing calls altogether.  As far as I’m concerned, if I don’t recognize the number on the caller ID then I don’t bother picking it up.  Jerry on the other hand, takes great delight in messing with AT&T’s outsourced help.  Last night he answers the phone:

“Yes, this is Peggy.”

“I am selling Girl Scout Cookies.”

“Why am I talking to you if you aren’t buying any Girl Scout Cookies?”

I’m sure that Ringadingasumupoo (aka “My name is John”) has absolutely no idea what the fark a Girl Scout cookie is.  But Jerry will carry on this conversation to its frustrating conclusion.  The only thing I hope that AT&T might gather from this recorded phone call is that maybe outsourcing isn’t such a good idea, especially if Midwestern rednecks are utilizing their foreign help as cheap entertainment.  Personally I find torturing foreigners to be a bit sadistic.  They can’t help it they were born in places that aren’t fit for human habitation and they can’t help it that (most of the time) their grasp of the English language is tenuous at best.  It doesn’t reflect well on the parent companies who exploit these people to save a buck though.   Hire the poor college kids right here in this country.  I would almost think about answering telemarketing calls if I were guaranteed an intelligible voice (preferably complete with the Central Ohio Newscaster Accent that I find so easy to understand, or maybe even an nice, sexy Texas drawl… gotta love the Texans) on the other end of the line.

Embrace the Inner Cougar, More Holiday Humor, and So Behind the Times

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Ask not for whom the bell tolls…ahh, Metallica- I have to admit to being a bit of a metal head still.  Of course Metallica didn’t write the original poem nor do their lyrics mirror the original penned by John Donne as a meditation on death. Both are cool though.

John Donne
Meditation 17
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee…” 

Metallica- “For Whom the Bell Tolls”

“Make his fight on the hill in the early day
Constant chill deep inside
Shouting gun, on they run through the endless gray
On they fight, for they are right, yes, but who’s to say?
For a hill, men would kill. Why? They do not know
Stiffend wounds test their pride
Men of five, still alive through the raging glow
Gone insane from the pain that they surely know

For whom the bell tolls
Time marches on
For whom the bell tolls

Take a look to the sky just before you die
It’s the last time you will
Blackened roar, massive roar, fills the crumbling sky
Shattered goal fills his soul with a ruthless cry
Stranger now are his eyes to this mystery
He hears the silence so loud
Crack of dawn, all is gone except the will to be
Now they see what will be, blinded eyes to see

For whom the bell tolls
Time marches on
For whom the bell tolls”

Well aren’t I macabre today.  And here all I was really wanting to do today is explain why I’ve finally changed my avatar pic from the one I took four years ago.  I might as well face it- I had to stop wearing contacts a couple of years ago for three basic reasons- one they are too expensive,  two, they never really corrected my astigmatism completely, and three, while I’m not quite ready for bi-focals, I started to have a hard time seeing close up with my contacts in.   I never liked wearing glasses, especially back in the day when the lenses were actually made of glass and therefore were as thick and likely as heavy as coke bottle bottoms.  I tolerate wearing glasses now for two reasons apart from the obvious, which is, I am blind as a bat without some form of vision correction-one, the plastic lenses used today are lighter and the thickness can only really be seen from the sides, and two, I actually have better distance vision with glasses than I can get with contacts because my astigmatism as well as my myopia can be corrected.   And I can just take my glasses off when I want to do close-up work or read fine print and it all works out.  Just don’t ask me to go up or down a flight of stairs or do anything else that requires being able to see more than two feet in front of my face without glasses, because I can’t.

Laser surgery is out of the question for me also, one, because if I can’t afford contacts I sure as hell can’t afford laser surgery, and two, even if I could afford it, I have scars on my left cornea where I had metal shavings removed from my eye.  Those scars are in a place which makes the laser surgery impossible on my left eye.    Presumably I could have my right eye corrected via laser surgery but what would be the point?  I am so terribly nearsighted it would probably make me sick to try to see with one eye at 20/20 or better and the other at 20/400.  Then there’s the issue of the astigmatism that as far as I know can’t be fixed with laser surgery.  The way I see it, I can see now – 20/15 with glasses- so why not just leave it at that?  If something were to go wrong with laser surgery, I would be the Murphy’s Law case.   No thanks.  I like to be able to drive.

 Vanity aside- and I did enjoy being able to have bright blue eyes with contacts- I have to consider the practical applications.  I can’t afford contacts any more and I see better with glasses anyway.  It’s just hard to go back to glasses in one sense as I go back to my childhood and early teens and remember my thick, heavy glasses as just one more hindrance to my ability to fit in with the rest of humanity- or at least to avoid mockery.  Contacts opened up a new world for me in some ways, but they never made me beautiful and they never made me popular.  They did make my pictures a little less frumpy and made night driving a lot easier (at least until the plastic lenses with less glare came out) for a long time.  But at 41 it’s a bit easier for me to embrace the inner cougar and just deal with glasses.  I’ve already accepted the fact that sleeveless shirts and hipster pants are verboten for the cougar set (that doesn’t break my heart much) so I might as well come to terms with glasses and hope that I don’t end up with tri-focals like Dad.

It’s almost time for Tacky Christmas again- when I go around and take pictures of the most ridiculous and Griswoldian Christmas decorations I can find.  Usually the west end of Marion is a treasure trove of tackiness, and I will be sure to return there for this year’s foray.  Last year was sort of disappointing except for the Mooning-Homer Simpson-as-Santa.  Any holiday decoration that involves the act of mooning is noteworthy to me.    I have yet to see a repeat of what I consider to be the Holy Grail of  Tacky Christmas- some redneck in the west end of Marion took an old Budweiser drive-thru display with some bimbo in a bikini on it and wrapped lights and beer cans around it.   I didn’t have a digital camera at the time and therefore missed the pic of a lifetime.  The best Tacky Christmas picture I actually have is this one:

It looks like Santa just kicked Frosty’s butt and is giving him the one-finger salute, but if you look closely it’s an optical illusion.  A hilarious illusion, but an illusion just the same.  2008 was actually my best Tacky Christmas collection.   Last year my heart really wasn’t in it, having lost Grandma two weeks before Christmas.  I just couldn’t get into tacky displays when I had to deal with funerary things and with helping Mom and Dad with going through Grandma’s stuff. Necessary though it was,  this was not a good time.  This year I hope to have more enthusiasm for finding some really tacky stuff. It’s more fun when Steve-o drives so I can take the pics.  Maybe he will go this year if we take Hannah with us.  I just have way too much fun with this. 

I’m behind the times.  I freely admit it. It’s refreshing to refrain from being beholden to the latest trend.  I make my own trends.  If anyone doesn’t like it, screw ’em.  My opinion only matters to me anyway.  But I certainly would like to find the Bud Light cans with Cardboard Bimbo display again, just to show how funny tacky can be.

In-Laws, Outlaws, Tacky Christmas, and It’s That Time of Year

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Ah, the holidays.  Actually I shouldn’t be overly critical as there is not a whole lot between me and the hollers and/or trailer park, but it’s that time of year when I remember why I only visit the in-laws and even certain obnoxious blood relatives when it’s absolutely necessary. 

Every Thanksgiving it’s the same routine.  Before I make the obligatory road trip to Cincinnati to my oldest sister’s house so that I can eat a really big piece of Humble Pie- on fine china no less, I have to make the tribute visit to the in-laws, where I will sit on the floor and eat a small slice of white meat turkey (nobody in his family touches the white meat, which is fortuitous for me) off of a Dixie plate with a plastic fork while his sisters’ assorted kids attempt to throttle each other.   It’s culture shock on both ends of the spectrum.  Going to my sister’s reminds me who is one small step above white trash dumpster diver and who is driving a BMW, vacationing in Switzerland every year, eating off matching dishes ,and who doesn’t have to shop for both clothing and kitchen utensils at garage sales and thrift stores.  Frankly when I go to my in-laws I feel like I am going to be a drive-by victim down in the ‘hood, and when I go to my sister’s they might as well paint a big bright sign across the side of my lowly Yaris that reads: ATTENTION- TURD ENTERING THE PUNCHBOWL.

Everyone has family members who inspire mixed emotions.  Fortunately for me the most creepy of my relatives are departed- most notably Uncle Bob, who was my twin great-aunt’s husband and therefore not a blood relative.  Uncle Bob wasn’t really a bad guy but he really liked nudies.  His entire garage where Mom’s side of the family held their big reunions was covered in 1940’s nudie pinups.  This was shocking to a five year old who is being raised in a household where nudity was strictly limited to going to the bathroom and taking a bath.  Worse yet, Uncle Bob liked to drink beer.  Alcohol in any form was strictly forbidden in Mom and Dad’s house.  I think my Dad just about went through the ceiling when he looked over and there was my sister- who was maybe seven at the time- chugging a Budweiser.  How was she supposed to know that she wasn’t supposed to drink the Budweiser?  Especially since Uncle Bob gave it to her?

Then there was Aunt Frances.  Aunt Frances was the stereotypical Cat Lady.  She weighed about 400# and had at least thirty cats at any given time wandering in and out of her house.  I have no problem with cats, but if you’re going to have them, do something about their incessant breeding.  When she broke a hip and ended up in the nursing home she would complain and whine that nobody visited her, but when you did visit her she gave you hell about everything from pierced ears to perms (I shudder to think about the commentary she would give me on the subject of hair color) to “foreign” cars.  Never mind that my Dad made his living working on ‘foreign” cars.   I remember all too well going to pick her up for my sister’s graduation party.  She took one look at my Subaru and refused to even try to get in it, even though I had carted around many of my large friends in it without incident.  I had to go back home and get my Mom’s Ford (a 1977 LTD II, what a lovely ride…) to cart her large carcass in. 

I miss the relatives that are dead but were cool, especially my grandparents, and my great-grandmother.   The holidays now are just a reminder of how pathetic I am compared to my sister, how much I miss my grandparents, and how much I really want to try to avoid my in-laws.

The Thankfulness of Lists, I Buy Premium Cable for This? Timing is Everything

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I know, I’m writing about lists of things to be thankful for and I begin by waxing cynical.  I’m thankful that God has a sense of humor and I sincerely hope that He understands where I get mine.  Comedy is the flipside of tragedy, and there is certainly no shortage of tragedy in this world.  So why not laugh at what you can?  One need only try a little bit to find something worthy of a giggle, and if you have a particularly fertile imagination, the whole world is chock full of comedic fodder.

I’m thankful for stupidity.

It sounds weird to give thanks for the stupid, but we lose sight of the humor in stupidity simply because stupidity is so abundant.  I’ve said it often- the two most common elements in the universe are shit and stupidity. This being said, if you could harness these two ignoble elements and transform them into energy, there would never be a need for petroleum fuels or coal or anything else used to generate power or fuel combustion.

1. Stupid People.

I’m thankful for stupid people for one reason.  They make me look smarter.  It’s sort of the same logic that is behind choosing fat, ugly friends.  If all of my friends are fat and ugly, by comparison I look thin and pretty even though at my very best I am plain and frumpy.  I’m not the brightest light bulb in the hallway, but compared to 95% of the population I might as well be a rocket scientist.  It’s scary, but it makes me glad my parents were two of the very few who didn’t do drugs back in the ’60’s.  Another thing to be thankful for!

2. Stupid procedures, processes, ideologies, etc.

I hate redundancy.  Fewer things piss me off more than having to repeat myself.  I am reasonably skilled at the use of the English language, and the last time I checked, I don’t stutter.  So if I’m taking the time to explain something, pay freaking attention.  Take notes if you must.

I really hate it when I have to fabricate detailed and completely inane explanations for others who aren’t going to be doing what I have to do anyway.  I have a philosophy about that.  If you want me to do something, tell me what you want.  Give me the authority to do the task at hand and the necessary tools to carry it out, then leave me alone and let me get it done. Explaining it to a non-participant is a waste of time since the one requesting me to do the task isn’t the one doing it anyway, and frankly, incessant micromanagement gets on my nerves.  I care about results.  The process of getting results is negotiable as long as it is efficient, legal, ethical, moral and cost-effective.

I like being the only person with certain abilities. It makes me feel important, wanted, loved, valuable, etc.  It makes me all the more thankful for being blessed with the ability to suck up oxygen, and convinces me that I might just have been created for some purpose above and beyond respiration, mastication and defecation.   Having cryptic wisdom or unique abilities can be a double edged sword, however, especially when I seem to be the only one who can reset the cable box at 12 midnight or when I am the only one capable of coherent speech and rational thought.  Sometimes it would be pleasant to hold intelligent conversation with members of my own species.  It happens, but hasn’t for a very long time.

Which brings me to the crowning glory of stupid, which is Drunk and Stupid.

I am not a tee-totaler by nature and don’t really have a problem with social drinking.  I have a problem with shitfaced drinking, but I am thankful that shitfaced drunks have the potential to be funny, at least when I’m not cleaning up after them.  Again, comedy is the flipside of tragedy, as the following true story will illustrate.

A few years ago, Jerry got a fifth of Wild Turkey as a gift from the aluminum scrap guy.  We had brought him plenty of nice loads of clean aluminum scrap from the body shop, and in his gracious spate of Christmas giving the scrap guy was passing out fifths of Wild Turkey.  Jerry is a stupid enough drunk when he gets drunk on beer, but when liquor is involved the stupidity factor increases exponentially with each sip.

Jerry had taken the fifth of Wild Turkey as a challenge, as in “how fast can I down this fifth?”  By the time he had polished it off he was “Weekend at Bernie’s” drunk- flopping all over the house and pissing all over the bathroom floor, toilet seat, sink, etc. and by rights should have passed out, but he just wouldn’t shut up and pass out.  This really sucked.

When Jerry’s drunk he doesn’t just get happy and sleepy like a normal drunk.  He gets hyper and usually along with the hyperness comes an inexplicable urge to embark on pointless home improvement projects which he will completely screw up and that I will have to clean up later. (which reminds me I still have to clean up the bathroom from his attempt to re-glue the tiles last night…arrgh!)  This unfortunate Wild Turkey bender had awakened in him an inexplicable urge to light a fire in the fireplace- with a log, a square of toilet paper (???) and a Bic.  Usually Jerry is scared shitless of all things fire-related and won’t let me use the fireplace (which pisses me off, because I like a nice roaring fire in the winter) so this really boggled my mind that he would even be near the fireplace.

Anyone who knows anything about lighting a fire in a fireplace (and I do, because my parents have had a working fireplace in their house for years, and I’ve built many fires in it) knows that you aren’t going to do jack without some tinder (i.e. pine needles, small sticks and newspaper, etc.) under the grate and some kindling (a little bit larger sticks) strategically placed under the big logs.

So Jerry’s efforts at fire starting were not terribly effective.  In a flash of whiskey-powered enlightenment he decides that the log will ignite should he pour a little gasoline on it.  Then, somehow, through the Wild Turkey fog, he remembers there is still gasoline for the lawnmower out in the garage!  He starts bellowing for me to go and get the gas can.  I was sober at the time and had rather horrific visions of the entire house going up in a blaze of glory, should I honor that request, so I replied that if he wanted to get the gas can he would have to do it himself.   I went back to bed and prayed he would pass out soon.

Usually telling Jerry to do anything himself means it won’t get done, but  I should have known- drunk and stupid trumps “lazy” every time.  About five minutes later I hear what sounds to be a sonic boom followed by mooing noises coming from the living room.  Jerry apparently has never played with VW carbureators and has never experienced the lovely phenomenon known as “flashback.”  Flashback occurs when accumulated fuel vapors in a small space ignite, such as when one is spraying ether down a carbureator and the engine backfires, causing the little bit of vapor present in the carb barrel to go “poof.”   Back in 1980-whatever I once lost a few inches of big hair and (alas, temporarily) both eyebrows, trying to help adjust the carb on my sister’s ’68 Bug.  (Another reason why I love fuel injection.)   It is a very brief but hot fire that generally will not burn skin but is really efficient at removing body hair.

Jerry lost about two inches of hair off the top of his head, most of both eyebrows and pretty much all of his nose hair.  He also smelled like upholstery that’s been in a car fire which is a most distinct, and quite unpleasant smell.  The only other collateral damage was one of the Wise Men from my Nativity that was on the mantle- he fell and shattered.  Of course I always wondered about the three wise men thing to begin with.  Finding three wise men to begin with is hard enough without trying to get them together all in the same place.  So my Nativity only has two Wise Men now which probably makes it more realistic.

The moral of the story?  If someone gives Jerry a fifth of whiskey or any other hard liquor for Christmas it’s getting regifted with the quickness.  He’s enough of an asshole with a 12 pack of Natties.

I’m thankful for Late Night TV. Sometimes.

One of the reasons I spring for premium cable is that I am an occasional insomniac.  The logic goes like this.  If I wake up at 2:30 AM and can’t go back to sleep, then I want to watch something interesting.  Sometimes it happens that there’s something good on, like underwater exploration, a historical documentary, anything featuring Mike Rowe, or the investigative forensic shows I like to watch.  Other times it seems like there’s nothing on but those damned infomercials- but even those can have some comic value depending on the pathetic product being hawked.

I’m thankful that I know no matter how many skin care systems, exercise machines and other self improvement type products there are, none of them will make me look like Cindy Crawford.  Of course I have no way of knowing how many other plain and frumpy aging cougars out there will fall for the line and buy that crap, but at least I know that “three easy payments of $79.95” will only serve to thin out my wallet.   Mom has bought an entire gym’s worth of that crap on QVC and I can attest she hasn’t lost an ounce.  I don’t think Dad has the heart to tell her that in order for exercise equipment to work you have to a.) assemble it and b.) use it.

The absolute worst infomercial out there is for a device that for lack of a better term appears to be a pecker pump.  Worse yet, it’s being marketed toward impotent old geezers, and apparently they can be reimbursed by Medicare.  Our tax dollars at work.  No wonder the government is going broke.

There is a certain angst that I get from all the infomercials on TV, even late at night.  I pay big money for premium cable.  I should be able to watch the good stuff 24/7.  But then again, I have to admit I did really laugh it up on the pump commercial.  It used to be the only place one would see such devices advertised were in porno mags.  You gotta love the power of creative marketing.

I guess timing is everything.

Well, spelling counts too.

History is Written by the Winners, the Vexing Scourges of Cougardom, and Halloween=Diabetic Hell

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Yikes.  Sometimes when I look in the mirror I see my mother.  I am not saying Mom’s a bad person or anything- her heart is in the right place, but sometimes she can be scatterbrained.  Maybe my surprise comes from my own presumption that I was going to be more flexible, more with it, more cosmopolitan, etc. than Mom was.  When we were kids she seemed to be (and truly was) incredibly naive.  Working in the public school system has done much to erode her naivete, especially now that she works in one of the poorest sections of Crack Town and she gets to see exactly why some people should be forbidden to breed and/or to have custody of children. 

I have my own brand of naivete that comes from spending the past 20 years or thereabouts firmly entrenched in white middle class suburbia.  I freely admit I have absolutely no idea (nor do I care) what songs are on the Top 40- I despise rap music and don’t care for country either, so my knowledge of popular music ends around 1985.  I also really don’t give a rat’s ass about fashion other than it pisses me off that it’s hard to find shirts with frigging sleeves and I really hate the “hipster” style pants which obviously were not made for women who have a.) given birth, or b.) had abdominal surgeries, in which case I am disqualified from attempting to wear them on both counts.   I want pants that go up to my waist, thank you.  And I want shirts with sleeves to cover my meaty arms that are still meaty, although thanks to the shake weight thing, the flabby flaps underneath them have mostly been replaced with muscle.  See, these things sound like Mom talking, as she would repeat the nuns’ admonitions (she went to an old school Catholic school ) about modest dress and all that.  Mom learned about coverage from Catholic nuns who wore the full length nun habits:

Back in the day I had no problem with mini-skirts, fishnets, displaying cleavage, etc.  My quest for modesty today springs more from a desire to be polite.  There are things the rest of the world shouldn’t have to endure, namely the visions of an aging cougar’s thunder thighs, meaty arms or sagging boobs.  I don’t think I am to the point of needing to don the nun’s habit, or even to resign myself to the muumuu, although the nun’s habit would save on hairspray.  I hope if I get to this point though, that someone will put me out of their misery, or at least cover the important stuff up.

I am surprised that there is a TV commercial pawning a prescription cream to fight the scourge of female facial hair.  It is a lesser known scourge of cougardom that post-menopausal women grow facial hair.  Yeah, I mean like beards and mustaches, and I am not talking just about certain ethnic groups whose women are hairy from birth, but about women of northern European descent like myself.  I’ve been using the face Nair for the past few years.  Unlike leg hair, arm hair and unmentionable hair, shaving face hair  just makes it grow back worse.  Plucking is just too labor-intensive even though I have had to tenaciously fight the unibrow since my teens.  It’s not just about the unibrow these days, although Mom was wrong about that.  I pluck and pluck just as much as ever and my eyebrows do NOT “naturally thin out.”   Two days of no plucking and The Unibrow Returns.  With a vengeance. But now it’s the unibrow AND chin hair and upper lip hair and farking sideburns for heaven’s sake. 

I can’t afford to pay $60 for a month’s worth of a script cream to keep face hair from growing in the first place, but I can pay $5 for a bottle of face Nair to burn it off every week or so.  I so wish I could afford laser hair removal, and that I could get rid of leg, arm, pits & bits, unibrow, and face hair forever.  I think Permanent Unwanted Hair Removal needs to be #1 on my Bucket List.   The Bucket List is something I need to start putting together.  Assuming that at 41 I am middle-aged, if I’m lucky I might have another 40 years to accomplish it.

I love Halloween.  It’s one of my favorite holidays even though some people argue that Christians shouldn’t celebrate it.  I don’t have a problem with it as long as nobody is sacrificing black cats or damaging property or anything.  But for a diabetic, Halloween is difficult.  I can’t have the candy.  I used to love the candy.  I hope Mom keeps Dad away from the candy. 

As a kid I wasn’t diabetic and I could enjoy the candy cornucopia with impunity.  KitKats, Snickers, Mounds, Milky Ways, Milk Duds, Smarties, Tootsie Pops, Sweet Tarts, Reeses, Hershey bars, I loved them all.   Today I have to be satisfied with watching Steve-o and his buddies stuff their faces with chocolate,  as I am wistfully chomping away on sugarless spearmint gum. Dammit.  But I can still dress up.

Eternity is Fixed in the Minds of Men, Horribly Politically Incorrect, and a Cougar’s Eye View

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Leave it to Steve-o to find an authentic SS helmet to try on when we were doing the museum tour with Dad’s car club last weekend.  I understand Steve-o is half German at least as far as ancestry goes (his “sperm donor” was 3/4 German…as if that means anything- I am more English than anything, but have some German ancestry) but the Nazis weren’t exactly the pinnacle of German culture.  The only things Hitler did right were building the Autobahn and commissioning the development of the Volkswagen.  Other than those two exceptions, he was a Really Bad Guy.  I’ve tried to explain to Steve-o, being the student of 20th century history that I am, that the Germans lost the war.  I hope he’s changed his mind about going as a Waffen SS officer for Halloween and about having his buddy paint a Luftwaffe cross on his newly acquired ’68 Bug.   Knowing Steve-o he will do both things, because he likes stirring up shit for the sake of the smell.  Perhaps Steve-o’s love of all things German goes back to a co-worker of mine who had commented that when Steve-o was a little boy he looked like a perfect specimen of Hitler Youth.  Thanks a lot.

When I confronted him about his bizarre love for the rebel flag, (Steve-o adores the Confederacy) I also explained that slavery really wasn’t a good idea, and that no one in my family as far as I knew ever owned slaves even though many of them were originally from Virginia.  Even for those who claim that the Confederate states had the right to secede, (which they may very well have) the Confederacy was defeated.  I don’t see Jefferson Davis on the $20, Robert E. Lee on the quarter, or any other Confederate player on any other denomination of American currency, and I don’t think I will any time soon.

History is written by the winners.  Had Germany won the war the world would have been a very different place. Better, who knows?  Worse, one could only imagine, but it would be different at least in ideology.   One could speculate that instead of communism being the forced collectivism menace of the 20th century that fascism would have taken its place.  However, forced collectivism or totalitarianism, whatever one wants to call it, and regardless of the ideology that is behind it, total governmental control effects the same results. 

It’s a shame, but all the hot ones are queer.

Toilet Paper Love, Canine Communication and More Medical Fun

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You know you’re getting old when your significant other measures the depth and intensity of your love for him/her based on whether or not you have left him/her sufficient toilet paper to handle the “morning paperwork.”  Jerry expects me to leave him a whole roll of TP in the mornings, and I can understand why. 

I am continually amazed at how my dogs communicate with each other.  I’m not talking so much about the dog greeting that we humans think to be so nasty, even though I wonder why a creature with such an infinitely acute sense of smell will readily plow its nose into a fetid pile of trash, a steaming pile of shit, or into another dog’s asshole.  I am a dog lover, but I find their preoccupation with offensive (at least to humans) smells rather bizarre.  Kayla (rest her soul, and yes I do believe dogs have souls) used to love to roll in dead things, and she would come in smelling to holy high heaven of some partially decomposed carcass from time to time.   I miss dear Kayla, (she is much of the reason why Clara is such an excellent dog) but I certainly don’t miss that dead carcass smell.   Luckily for me Clara didn’t pick up that nasty habit.  Lilo likes to carry around dead things, but not necessarily to roll in them. She spent two weeks playing with a dead bird before it got so gross I took from her and put it in the dumpster.   Heidi as usual is in her own little world, happy simply to have food to eat and not have to spend her whole life in a 6X6 pen outside anymore.

It is amazing how dogs read behavior- not only among other dogs but also human behavior.  Since I am very weak in intuitive skills (I gravitate more toward the concrete that I can see and understand and prove) I gain much from observing my dogs.  They speak primarily through their body language with the others.   A head nod or a nudge or a glance speak volumes in the world of dog communication, which makes me wonder if they are not more visually oriented than many researchers think.   We know they are heavily reliant on  olfactory and auditory input (far more than humans who are primarily visual) but I believe there is much said in the visual signals.  I don’t know exactly who did the study, but even the way that dogs carry their tails is a form of communication.  It’s more than simple up or down but even the direction of the tail wag means something- subtle visual cues that are likely used in combination with the auditory and olfactory information all dogs both emit and translate.  They know and understand more than we give them credit for.

Thankfully (hopefully) for the next month or so I will not have any more medical fun to endure.  Yesterday I had the liver ultrasound, more blood draws, and the paper nightie visit.  The scary part of this is that as many times as I’ve had to have medical tests, procedures, etc. it is becoming almost second nature.  For the most part I know the drill a lot better than I want to- where to park, to make sure to ask the phlebotomist to draw blood from my left arm because that’s where the good veins are, and to have my laundry list of meds neatly printed out so I don’t have to try to remember them all and/or scrawl them all down in a space where there isn’t enough room to scrawl them all.  I am thankful most of the Dr.’s offices have gone to an automated format so all they do is input your information. It saves me time too.

I’m trying not to get too freaky about the liver tests, etc.  The abnormal readings are likely a result of diabetes and may not mean a whole lot.  I know they want to rule out really nasty things like hepatitis or cancer.  The whole idea of cancer scares the hell out of me not so much because I am afraid to die but I am afraid of a long,  painful and expensive death.  I can only hope and pray that when it’s my time to die I go quickly, painlessly and inexpensively.  Sometimes I wonder why the medical profession tries so hard to delay the inevitable rather than do what they can to make a person more comfortable if they are terminally ill anyway.  I don’t have the answer for that.    I am glad that I don’t have to endure the paper nightie visit again until next year.

Respect My Authority (Yeah, Right) and Power to the Control Freaks

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I always wondered why Steve-o’s friends were afraid of me.  I really am not a violent person, no matter how much I watch cop shows and episodes of Dr. G.  In fact from my earliest conscious memories until I was about 14, I got the hell beat out of me pretty much daily.  At one beating a day from ages 2-14, that would be  4382 beatings (assuming there would be two leap years in that time range)  logged in- years before I could legally down a fifth of vodka or so to forget it all.

Granted, some days I probably avoided a beating and other days I know I got multiple beatings, so it all works out.  I know how to assume the position of least resistance to better protect the more vulnerable areas while I’m being pummeled.  The only time I ever fought back was when I was  17 and beat the living hell out of my sister (who had probably inflicted at least 3,000 of the beatings previously mentioned) and that only because she took my car without permission and ran it low on oil.  Taking my car without permission and with impunity (she assumed she had a “right” to just take anything that was mine) as well as almost blowing it up was simply the tipping point that crossed me over the line from fearful and resentful deference into seething rage.  My rational mind wasn’t even engaged. This beating was given on seething, festering anger and adrenaline alone. To this day I wonder how I did it and it scares me to think that I did. I just saw  red.  I will concede that even the meekest and most unassuming soul can be pushed to the point of doing damage.  I truly believe any person, if pushed long and hard enough, or given the right circumstance such as self-defense or defense of a child, can be driven to kill.  My sister got off easy with a busted lip and a few bruises.  Even after Dad had to almost carry me off to keep me from continuing to kick her in the face, he even admitted she got less than she deserved, and that she had been asking for it for years.

This was 17 years’ worth of retribution for as many years of bullying and beatings.  It takes a lot to provoke me to physical violence. I don’t like getting physical with anyone, mostly because in a battle of brawn I will most certainly lose.   Anonymous passive-aggressive revenge is my preferred mode of vindication.  It takes more intelligence and keeps me from potential bodily harm.  I would be the one who would put catfood in your meatloaf, or put on the Souza march CD at full blast when it’s early, and you’re hungover.  I prefer to watch from afar with concealed glee as you shovel in mouthfuls of meat by-products intended for feline digestion, and snicker in secret delight from a different room as you almost hit the ceiling and pee your bed to the tune of “Stars and Stripes Forever.”   That’s usually about as far as I would go with trying to get even.

Anyone who would be afraid of me must have their wires crossed or something.  I am neither large nor strong.  I am so uncoordinated that walking without falling is somewhat of a challenge, let alone coordinating the efforts required to smack someone down and deliver an effective pounding.  So just what is so intimidating?  The dogs know I’m harmless, but then I believe dogs are more intuitive than most people.  Dogs just know certain things. 

I do have a loud voice and a broad vocabulary, but that and $5 will get you the footlong sub of your choice at Subway.

I have to admit that I can be a control freak about a number of things.  I don’t like my schedule disrupted unless I am the one doing the disrupting.  It does disturb me when I use a particular brand or product and then can’t get it for whatever reason.  Toothpaste (Colgate Total Whitening- Gel) is one I am very picky about as well as shampoo and conditioner.  I use the Pantene Restoratives.  Target was down to one tube of conditioner the last time I ran out, and I ended up having to climb up on the shelving to reach it as (of course) it was on the top shelf behind everything.  It’s sad but I think I would have had a major meltdown had I not spotted the last lone conditioner tube. 

I am surprised that such trivial inconveniences have the power to get me so riled up.  Perhaps there is something to the theory that learned helplessness (knowing that life is going to kick your ass so you roll over accordingly) leads to all sorts of autoimmune disease and high blood pressure (I could be the poster child for that.)  There are very few things that I can control but when even those few things don’t work right then even more anger gets turned inward.  I let it burn and seethe and simmer which is exactly the wrong thing to do- and then I have the potential to explode over something stupid like not being able to find conditioner at Target. 

On a lighter note, I found a rather delightful blast from the past.  It’s been a long time since I watched Pee Wee’s Big Adventure – admittedly the Pee Wee films are not paragons of the motion picture art, but the guy is funny.  He’s so insipid and annoying that it makes him funny.  I don’t know why but the Mr. T Cereal caught my attention- after watching the Rube Goldberg breakfast clip from the Pee Wee movie  I was reminded that Mr. T Cereal was an actual food item that could be purchased in the mid-80’s.  Perhaps we have moved forward after all, although I know that there are still kids’ cereals out there that are based on cartoon characters or fake time wrestling or whatever.  I know kids hate being forced to eat breakfast.  Mom would never bow down to the latest sugar coated delights of the 70’s (and there were many!) so we were stuck eating either Honey Combs (why she thought these to be healthy I’ll never know) or Cracklin’ Bran which looked, smelled and most likely tasted exactly like dog food.   Sure, you get a week’s worth of fiber in one bowl, but face it- kids just don’t need that much fiber to be able to plop out a good one.  I can see someone my age needing a cereal like Cracklin’ Bran or Super Fiber Colon Sweep, but not kids.  They haven’t had the opportunity to accumulate all that colon drudge that we old people have hanging about.  

Steve-o never really liked cereal regardless of the cartoon character on the box or the prize, but he would eat chocolate Pop Tarts by the box.  He probably still would if he could afford them.  It seems that funky food preferences are easier to maintain if they are maintained on someone else’s dime.  By now he has probably learned how to make a pack of ramen noodles and a bottle of Texas Pete’s last for three meals.  It’s a valuable skill.

More Medical Fun, Poverty Sucks, and Trying Not to Freak Out

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I’ve never been much to enjoy exercise.  In fact, I hate it- but unfortunately it’s a necessary evil.  30 minutes on the health rider machine every day, so I at least get some cardiovascular activity.  I’ve been doing the six minutes a day thing with the “shake weight” too, although I think all it’s doing for my meaty arms is replacing the pendulous skin under my arms with bulky biceps some dudes would kill for.  It is not giving me shapely feminine arms, rather, I think it’s making my upper body and shoulders even more formidable and off proportion, as if I were lifting weights or something.   I’ve always had huge arms- which is why I refuse to wear sleeveless shirts or dresses alone.  The sleeves of my wedding dress had to be cut off and re-done so my meaty arms would fit in them.  I might wear a sleeveless shirt under something or over something with sleeves- but never alone.  I don’t want to encourage those guys who have speculated that I used to be a male.  I know for a fact I am a biological female (even had a kid in the somewhat normal biological fashion too) but I have bizarre proportions.  I even looked bizarre the summer after my senior year when out of stress, chain smoking and probably a little too much mail order speed, (I admit I had a weakness for psuedoephedrine back when you could buy it by the 1,000 white crosses at a time) I’d unintentionally starved myself down to 115#.  I did not look sexy.  I looked like a top heavy scarecrow, a fact that even my Dr. pointed out when Mom dragged me in to see him because she thought I was anorexic or something.  Mom always used to be on my ass about  being too heavy (pot calling the kettle black, but I digress) but at that point even she thought I looked skinny and sick.  My Dr. at the time informed me that I needed to weigh somewhere between 130# and 150#, and that, “You might as well forget about looking like a model or something because that’s just not the way you’re made.”    I had to agree with him on that one.  At 115#  I looked like an emaciated dwarf.  The sad fact is, that even at a healthy weight I have bizarre proportions.  I know beauty is fleeting and I never had it anyway, but I still don’t want to be an ill-proportioned land whale.

This being said I am still on the quest to get down to 140#.  I have about thirty# or so to go, but I figure that with enough portion control (aka starvation…but it saves money on food too) and exercise that I will get there.  Eventually.  That’s one of the motivating factors behind getting through daily exercise and enduring all that hotness and sweating.  I think the sweating is the worst part about exercise.  I hate being hot and stinky.  I can be very disciplined about eating even though I don’t particularly like it.  The other reason for the whole fitness regime is I’m trying to keep my blood sugar down.  Diabetes sucks.  But if I could get down to 140# that would put me back to where I was for most of high school, and at least assuage my fears of becoming a 300# behemoth slob like so many of the girls I went to school with.

 

It really doesn’t seem fair- I know I could use to lose 20-30# and am actively working on it, but what about all the really, really fat people you see who never get diabetes?  I know there’s a heredity factor there also (Grandpa and Dad) but neither of my sisters have it either.  I don’t wish diabetes on anyone but it just sucks.  I think sometimes people look at you like it’s all self-inflicted and it’s not necessarily so.  Admittedly in my youth I lived on caffeine, nicotine, sugar and grease- but I changed that tune long before I was ever diagnosed with diabetes. 

Now I have to go back for yet even more lab work- it seems my liver is doing funky things which may be nothing or may be something (good question) and an ultrasound test on my liver too which is freaking me out.  It’s bad enough I already scheduled my paper nightie visit- apparently I still have to go get the nether area checked once a year even though I haven’t gotten lucky since Clinton was president, and I had a hysterectomy so there couldn’t be a whole lot left to have to check- but now I have to get more freaking blood tests too.  I’m sorry but that shit freaks me out.  I don’t know which is worse, the paper nightie visit, or the ominous specter of more blood work and the possibility of having even more shit wrong with me. 

Not having any money and worrying about how I’m going to pay for the bare necessities is a whole other issue I’m dealing with now.  Steve-o is costing me a small fortune not to mention scripts and all these Dr. visits that I really can’t afford.  Jerry is whining all the way about paying for anything which doesn’t help.  I am trying to trust that God will provide- and He does- but I really wish I didn’t have to go through the cliff-hanger version.  I can only pray for neither poverty nor riches- I just want to have the resources I need to get by.  Sometimes I have  a really hard time.  I know other people may have it harder so I really shouldn’t complain, but it scares me having to scramble and shift and scrape.  It never seems as if there is enough money to cover all the endless bills and needs and all that, and frankly the stress of it all drains me.   I’m trying not to freak out about money or the lack thereof, but I need some real help in that area.  I know God answers prayer and right now that’s where I’m at with it.  Trying to trust…I believe, help my unbelief.

Say it Isn’t So, Peculiarities, and a Cougar’s Eye View

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One of the interesting perks of cougardom is the ability to give young, hot guys the eyeball without attracting much scrutiny.  I would think it more creepy to be getting the lecherous eye from someone old enough to be one’s mother than for a guy to be eyeballed by a female of the same age, but maybe they just write off old bats like me as harmless and assume I’m not looking.  I am looking.   I can’t help it. My great-grandmother was checking them out and looking at the beefcake well into her 90’s.  Some things never change, and I guess it’s not too terrible to be caught admiring the scenery.

Speaking of young, hot guys- maybe this is crude of me to point out being that I was at the hospital with a friend- but one of the ER Dr.s was rather easy on the eyes.  Easy on the eyes and half my age…well maybe late 20’s-early 30’s.  Leave it to me to notice, and it was probably a good thing Jerry was out trying to find Bob while I was reeling in my tongue.  I never used to give younger dudes a second look, but since guys my age and older generally are missing hair and/or teeth, and tend to be slovenly and paunchy, I guess I can’t help but to notice the hot young things.   I can hide behind relative obscurity knowing that deep down I remind them of their mothers.

Shame on me, although I still find it unnerving when I observe that some of Steve-o’s friends are rather hot.  These guys are half my age.  Twenty years ago…I would have been afraid to talk to them.  Today I make cougar jokes with them.  Hopefully this means I am harmless after all.

I give Jerry a lot of critique- some deserved, and some not so deserved.  Since I tend to be very harsh on myself, I can also be harsh to the point of cruelty with others.  I have to really watch that in both my attitude and my conversation with Jerry.  In spite of all his idiosyncracies and rough exterior I know he is only trying to shield a heart that is far more sensitive than mine.  He lives in the nebulous world of emotions that I can barely acknowledge, let alone navigate.  I’ve been emotionally stunted ever since I can remember, so it’s exceedingly hard for me to put myself in someone else’s place.  Empathy is not my strong point!  I know that biting sarcasm isn’t the most constructive form of feedback , and there are times when I should certainly hold my tongue more than I do.  I have my own trainloads of baggage and enough dysfunction in my own family to write my own twisted sit-com that would give the drivel on network TV a run for its money.  I can see it now-check it out- the chronically depressed, forty-something, menopausal, PTSD-suffering, pathologically anti-social mutant troll chick tries live with both a painfully “normal” family and  superdysfunctional in-laws!  I’m on Prozac for a reason.  Better yet, send me on a road trip- or like last night, leave me to while away hours waiting with friends at the hospital by making shallow conversation and trying to see the humor in my surroundings.  Hospitals can be filled with hilarity (and even hot young residents…) if you know where to look.  I still think it was funny- the last time my mother-in-law was in the ER Porky grabbed a few plastic bracelets that said “FALL RISK” and stashed them in my purse so I could put them on Jerry when he’s wasted.  The difference there is when Jerry falls while drunk he just sort of rolls around.    Then he spends the next day complaining that the beer shits gave him a wicked case of the hemorrhoids.  At least I don’t suffer from hemorrhoidal itch. Yet.

I try to save the most biting sarcasm for my own personal ruminations- a case of find the humor in it, or cry my guts out.  Maybe this is why I enjoy British humor so much- it tends to be dark and sarcastic.   Some people don’t get the humor behind the scene in Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail when the guy with the cart was coming around to collect the dead.  I get it.  Humor is where you find it.  Life on this earth is a limited time offer.  Might as well laugh when you can.

On the bright side: The above distressed 1985 Camry Wagon is not my car.