What the doctor found when he examined me...

So as part of my Med re-balancing for the SADD treatment I had to go to my internist and have him check my levels and my heart and blah, blah, blah out.

Now, I love my doctor.  He's ten years older than and so fucking cute it's unnerving. And he's gay.  And I have desired him since I first saw him in 1983.  He's a just a total doll.

So I'm taking my shirt off and he was looking at the screen and typing things into the computer and he asked if the stress level from work had gone down (no) and if the meds were working (kinda)  and says whats wrong (Damn computer) and I said that Tuesday, I had some odd chest pains and my left arm went numb. 

So he looks at me and says "shortness of breath? No.  "Dizzy?" No.  "We'll do an EKG you could have had a minor episode."

And I asked "Angina?"

And he turned and looked at me, dead serious and said "Who has a mangina?"

There was dead silence. "Did you take up fisting?  What have I told you about that?"

"Huh?"

"Your mangina.  With your history of diverticulosis you are the last person who should have your mangina stretched."

Then he thought about it.

"Did you say "Angina"?"

Yes.

"No fisting?"

Never - it's an outtie, not an innie.

"You thought it was Angina?  I don't think it was Angina.  Probably stress - your blood pressure is high.  I'll write a script for some Xanax."

But what about the mangina?

"Where did I get that word?" He shrugged his shoulders and said "I know some guys who love to fist.  They would have manginas."  We smiled, and I went off for the EKG.

Everything is fine.  I have my Xanax. I prefer meditation.  But I have to stop this visual image of my head with manginas.

Dan Savage is living proof, it does get better

Late 1980s

2010

Double the Pleasure: The Ring A Ding Wine

Report of the Middle of The Street Committee

There is still a buzz in the air surrounding the activity at the House of the Cruel Mistress and Sub Trevor.  Our block's Middle of the Street Committee - which meets whenever we see each outside  and we stand in the middle of our rarely traveled street to discuss and hopefully solve the problems of the world (and maybe our own neighborhood) had an impromptu gathering in which tongues wagged and a gaggle of gossip and speculation was shared amongst the loyal and settled residents of our street.

High on every one's list was the activity going on over at the Cruel Misstress' house as one shill contractor after another came and went.  A dumpster arrived, only to be carted away empty a couple days later because it didn't have a permit to be on the street according to "Just Call Me Judy" a neighborhood activist and all around pill who always introduces herself with the line "Just call me Judy!" 

"You can't put that on the street without a permit!" Just Call Me Judy stated to the cruel mistress of the house.  And when the Cruel Mistress failed to comply, Just Call Me Judy made good on her threat and called the city and guess who got cited.

Two weeks ago, Just Call Me Judy first told us what she had done.  "That'll teach her," she said wrapping up her pyhrric victory tale.  All it did was piss off the Cruel Mistress.

Two weeks ago she was happy as a clam.  But this day, she was less happy.  The Cruel Mistress ran an end run around Judy, and Judy was fuming.

"Look who thought she was just the top of the shit heap," whispered Pot Smoking Bob.

Topic 2 Involved the Creul Mistress' attack plan "B".  Unable to get the dumpster in (and too lazy to get the permit from the city for $25) she started emptying the junk in house to the front yard with a sign that read "FREE".  She did this in the middle of the night when no one could see her doing it.

In our neighborhood there is a long standing tradition of placing such unwanted items next to the dumpsters in the alleys.  Dumpster Divers (those who make their living at finer flea markets) drive up and down our alleys looking for other people's cast offs, which they clean up stock their perpetual yard sales with -OR- if they are cunning enough and middle-class, they pick this stuff up, clean it up and then donate it to the Salvation Army and take a tax write off.  It's recycling at its best.  Just don't expect someone to take your old water tank.   Broken Toilets are desirable, your old water heater isn't.  Evidently, there is a limit to greed in this world.

However this "Free" thing in her front yard got into our collective craws. 

What happens in the alley happens in the alley, but when you start putting things into the front yard, that starts inviting trouble and things start turning up missing on the front porches of our houses.  We also noted that the number of car windows smashed in our neighborhood has risen since the Cruel Mistress has started her free-to-good-home yard sales.

"Does she honestly think that we would covet this junk?  Who want's her stuff," asked Helicopter Sandy.  Helicopter Sandy is a police officer in our neighborhood and flies one of those "eye in the sky units".

Pot Smoking Phil nodded, and then he tried to pass his joint to me.  No, not my thing.  God knows what is in Phil's oral cavity.  Makes my blood run cold just thing about it.

"It's just crappy furniture, old plastic bowls, hangers - who the hell  has that many hangers?" asked Sandy.  In fact, Cruel Mistress had thrown out for the "Free" crowd about 50 plastic grocery bags filled with plastic clothes hangers.

I pointed out that I save cardboard and chipboard.  "You never know when you are going to have to ship something.  May be it's the same with her and 'she never knows' when she is going to have to hang something up."

The Bob Wolf(e)s agreed.  "With him..." said Bob Wolfe as they pointed to each other.  "...it's plastic bags," said Bob Wolf.

One Tooth Bit - a large lesbian with terrible oral care habits said "It's not even good stuff.  When she gonna throw out some handcuffs?"  You never want to stand too close to One Tooth Bit. When she speaks, she sprays.  

"Bit" who was once Betsy in her youth is disgusting.  If anyone else had said that it would have received a roll of the eye's, but that it was Bit who said that and made an illusion to S/M sex just made the rest of queasy.

"GROSS!" said the Bob Wolf(e)s in unison.

There was general chatter from the group, and then Boob Job Carla (who used to be Realtor Denise until her husband bought her "the bestest gift a girl can get" a breast augmentation) spoke out over all:

"The bottom line is that this could lead to increased crime, and that can hurt property values."  (And her commissions.)

"You think that's a problem," added in I Don't Have a Sphincter Audra, "I don't have a sphincter." (She brings this up in any situation and that she will interject it is a foregone conclusion)  "Now that'll cause you real problems."

And with that lovely image fresh in our gray matter, The Middle of the Street Committee ajorned

That evening when the husband was out walking Rocky the Wonder Dog and Buzz Saw Kevin (who though small is mighty with his teeth and can rip just about anything to shreds in 10 seconds flat) and who should come out of her house, her arms loaded down with more crap, but the Cruel Mistress.

The husband who is not prone to confronting people, even when they step on his toes ("maybe they misjudged their steps.") did exactly that when he came face to face with the neighbor whose name I dare not put in print.  When he returned from the walk he seemed angry (very unusal for him) and annoyed.   He told me that he just couldn't keep from saying something. 

"You said something to her? So what did you say?" I asked.

"I told to stop putting her crappy crap out in the front yard, and that no one wanted her crappy crap," he said, a bit disappointed in himself.

"Did you really call it crappy crap?  Twice? Maybe you really said that she needed to take her 'fucking crap" and shove it in the dumpster," I said.

"No, I said crappy crap." 

Oh, what a cathartic release that must have been.

You know those WASPish New England types.  They just keep pushing it down - deep down - those negative feelings, those feelings that the rest of midwesterners see our therapists about.  And one day all those feelings that have been pushed down, compacted and locked away in that place deep down come roaring forth with a good old fashioned "crappy crap" and the rage is vented. 

Whatever my husband said it seems to have worked; there hasn't been any crap - crappy crap or fucking crap inclusive - left out in the past five days.  It seems she got the message.

The next thing I need to do is find someone to call her phone number and find out how much she wants for that Palace of Pain of hers...

I begin to enter the rough season

When I was a child, I dreaded fall.  The start of school was traumatic enough, but my learning disability and the invisable sign on my forehead that read BULLY ME AROUND all made school even more daunting than it would have been for your average student.

But fall seemed to kindle something deeper in me that I couldn't put into words. 

While other kids saw the beauty in the colored leaves that fell from the trees, I saw death in the forms of the harsh branches, twigs and sticks.  The cold winds seemed to reach down into my bones and not leave until summer warmth and the sun reached deep down and into me.

Winter I was fine with.  Snow brightened the world and a warm house made everything cozy.  And winter yeilded to spring with its promise of an end to the school year, the flowers and the leaves on the trees that softened their stark look. And in my mind spring started on Groundhog Day - the promise that whether it was early or late, we had more good days in front of than bad.

But fall, with its process of dying-off and slumber, somehow hit me harder than anything.

As I got older, Fall became more and more my enemy.  By the time I was 20, the middle of October became suffocating with the feeling that life offered no hope to go on. And that when the crying started - hours of sobbing for no real reason other than the rage that I felt that life was leaving me behind.

As I got older, each fall became more more enshrined in depression and in dread.  It finally got to the point where I almost considered offing myself.  But then about 20 years ago I got very, very lucky when I got myself into treatment with a shrink who listened to me instead of the others wanted to blame my parents for my unhappiness.

The first step was the diagnosis of clinical depression and getting me onto an SSRI - in my case, Zoloft.  The fisrt lesson that I learned was that not all SSRI's work the same with the same people. I was lucky, the Zoloft worked for me.  The idea was that my brain was processing (not producing) serotonin too fast.  The pills regulated that function making the uptake more efficient. The second step was fine tuning the dosage, and then balancing it with a second medication - wellbutrin.  With that under control, there was hope.

But come the next couple fall seasons, the sense of dread started creeping in getting worse. This is when the shrink and my doctor both agreed taht I was suffering from Seasonal Affective Depression - SAD.  SAD (sometimes SADD) is a photo chemical disease based on the premise that daylight affects the production of brain chemicals like serotonin.  In my case, the brain was making enough in the fall, thus the feelings of dread and hopelessness.  To treat that we using full spectrum light each day, and I double up on the SSRI that I am on now (Zoloft stopped working for me about ten years ago).

On the upside, I know whats going on in my head. The downside is that for the past 20 years I have been gaining weight, which is a side effect of the pills. So I can be morose and skinny, or plump and content.  

It reminds me of the old saying: It never rains, but it pours.  But at least I know that the sun is going to shine again.

The Gayest Thing in My House

Mistress MJ asked her loyal readership what is the gayest thing in your house. So I went spelunking through some boxes of stuff and came up with this item: My mother's sunglasses from the 1950s.

Your eyes are not deceiving you.  These are two tone clear plastic with GLITTER suspended in the plastic cat glasses. And they are still kept in their original 1950s leather carrying case.  

These are so gay that they are GAY.

Look for me to be driving the Oldsmobile this coming summer in these glasses.   That won't be gay so much as it is campy, but you get the idea.

Famous Hollywood Cat Fights: Shelley Winters v. Lauren Bacall

Shelley Winters was married to Tony Fanciosa from ca. 1956 to 1960. 

They look happy, don't they.  Shelley said that the nail in the coffin for her marriage to the hard bodied Franciosa was her Oscar win for The Diary of Anne Frank.  "Tony took one look at that Oscar and I knew my marriage was over."

As the end of their union was drawing to a close, Franciosa took up with this woman:

Mrs. Betty Bogart, widow of Humphrey Bogart (you know her as actress Lauren Bacall), and she had the hots for the hot headed Italian, so the two started an affair.  You know what they say - even though you loved and lost, they nights just keep getting lonelier when there no one to cuddle with. One night Tony failed to show up for a rendezvous with Betty.  So, Betty being Betty picked up the phone and called the Franciosa house:

I have never found anything to say that these two women ever spoke to one and other again.

Cookie, Cookie, can you find Cookie?

Watch and report - where do I first appear, and what is the last thing I say in a voice over?

I'm still out here...

...buried under massive amounts of client coding at my job at Soul Crushing Client Support, Inc.

Looking forward to full weekend of nothing to do.  So stay tuned!

And now a public service announcement on Breast Health

Kathy: get it, got it, good.

From the Hair Hall of Fame and Donna Lethal:

Young woman at party for singles at South Bay Club apartment complex.

Location: Los Angeles, CA, US

Date taken: March 1967

Photographer: Arthur Schatz

So what happened?

She probably got there and didn't know what to do, and then she got a little stoned, and then she met a guy, they got together, they broke up, got back together, got married, got pregnant and had a baby, got pregnant and had a baby, got a house, got pregnant and had a baby, got him through medical school, grew apart, then got divorced and then she got angry because he got another woman, so she got into booze and got some valium, and then she had to get the kids ready for school and get them to the bus, then she had to get a job, and got invited to drinks at a bar with a work friend, who got Kathy a name tag and the whole damn thing just got repeated all over again.

Meet Kevin

The newest member of the Cookie family, Kevin, a two year old terrier mix and seven pounds, stinking wet. Found him at the county pound this morning. Big brother Rocky is doing well.  We're all adjusting.  I'm bushed.

I'm on TV tonight!

Oh, yeah - thats me flapping my lips...

Something's coming....

But is it something good?

Converting people is harder than you would think!

The soul crushing career that I find myself trapped in to put food on the table, a roof over my head and dollars that will morph into pennies by the time I am 65 is grinding me into mush this week.  I work for a boutique data processing company with a selective group of clients.  We allowed another client in, and we are happy and grateful, but the phone calls from all of clients will not cease this week in the midst of the conversion!

I'm too pretty for this!  This was not part of the growing up in Shaker Heights contract that I was promised!

And while I'm at, FUCK THE CHINESE and their currancy manipulation!

Anyway I found a few moments to myself this afternoon while I am engourging myself on a fast food lunch (Barf) and I was so down until I visited my friends on other blogs. 

You guys crack me up!

But the following image so fully cracked me up that I almost chocked to death on the fast food:

My thanks to Jason for brightening my day with something so out there that I thought it couldn't be real - it was.

To my hat is also off to TJB, Jason, MJ, Norma Desmond, Mr. Peenee, Donna Lethal, Pirate, Felix, Thombeau, Mr. Bluehaunt and everyone else; thank you for making me smile and think, and bless you for giving me a safe harbor away from it all!

From "That Girl" to that ghoul

You have to hand it to Norma Desmond.  Leaves the door open for others.

Late 1950s, all original.

So I should note that someone got it right.

1960, The nose is planed, and the bridge smoothed.

But I have to wonder how he got it right so fast?

The hair gets a grown-up redo (ca. 1963) in the Italian sytle.

Hagia Sophia is the name of the massive Catholic Church in Istanbul.  But that was a red herring for Drewbie.

1964: That Girl is born with a flip and bangs.

 and Jason is our winner!

But this storry is a cautionary one as well as a contest.

"Gypsies Tramps and Theives" style becomes That Woman, 1970. 

We have to stay fashionable, right? Longer hair and now good girl Ann Marie starts reaching for a look.

Notice her exposed zipper on the boot? 

That's fashion for you.  And those boots, probably plastic.

We all age, and when your looks are your career, well, a girl's gotta do what a girl has to do:

1980-2000

The "soft" focus era begins followed by some more nose surgery focusing on making

 her nostrils less noticeable, which means they are now more noticeable.

But our face still has a twinkle on it because who would think thta botox would smooth out lines and  keep one from having a natural face?

And then it happens...

But our nose starts to look pinched.  That happens when we have more work done. 
Little slits for nostrils.  One day we have a little Botox, and then one day you get a lot:

Unable to find the muscle control that even Helen Hayes had in her 80s, our That Girl is 

unable to smile with her face, now devoid of those "laugh lines" that give character and show wisdom.

Her nostrils have been flattened within an inch of her life and the line of her nostrils is now crooked.

So lets look at the progression again, shall we?

In summary...

There you have it, Marlo Thomas, from That Girl to that ghoul.

Thanks to all you played!

Happy Birthday Mom

Cookie's Mom

(October 1, 1924-November 9, 2010)

A year ago today we had one of those surreal moments with our parents as they approach the end of their lives.  Mom's drivers license expired on her Birthday last year and the one thing she wanted for her birthday more than anything was to get it renewed.  I had committed to giving a presentation to the local genealogical society that Saturday, so the husband dropped me off the Historical Center complex and then went to get Mom and take her to get her license, but she started to get crotchety - am outcome of the radiation treatment and her Oxycodone, and he needed help dealing with her.

She wouldn't leave the license bureau, so he left and got me.  When we got back there, there she sat right where he left her.

So I walked up to the counter with her and the woman looked at me, her eyes full of trepidation.  We walked through the eye exam, which Mom nailed, except she couldn't understand the part about the peripheral vision - that there were lights flashing along the sides of the eye cones and that she needed to tell us when she saw it and wave her hands to indicate left or right.

When she was trying to figure out what to look for, the woman behind the counter mouthed to me "You aren't going to let her drive, are you?" 

I mouthed back "No - we have her car with us, but this license means a lot to her."

So the woman behind the counter played along as long as she could, then we had to go to the Highway Patrol Office to see if their lower light helped her.  We waited for our turn and while we waited she turned to me and said "Do you remember when we used to go looking for things at junk stores and we tried to bring home that big thing from that one store, but it wouldn't fit in my Riviera?"

Oddly, I did.   It was a large store display that had been chucked in the back and Mom thought it would make a display for my car collection in our basement. I must have been ten (and she would have been 48), so neither of us could move the damned thing.  We struggled with it for a about a half hour before we gave up.

"We sure had fun, didn't we." she said.  It wasn't a question, but a statement, because did have fun when it was us against the world.

They called us up, and again, she nailed the eye exam.  The trooper behind the counter and I had the same discussion in silence that I had had with the woman next door.  FINALLY Mom caught on and saw the blinking lights from the corner of her eyes.

God love that trooper; he told her that she passed and could get a new drivers license, but he also told her that she was not to drive until she had been off the pain pills for a month.  She agreed (but she had no intention of listening to him) and we left with her new license.  We, of course, kept the car because keeping that car 40 miles away was the only way we were going to keep her from driving.

That was one long afternoon, but I so glad that we were together for it.  And I can look back and laugh to myself.  Yes, we did have fun that afternoon, and all those other days before.

I miss her an awful lot.

And I miss being able to do things for her, like making sure she got what was the most important thing for her for her birthday.