Dear Bestie

      This is why I love my bestie. This morning, instead of doing my normal deliveries for work (I own a delivery service based business) I was home, moping and surfing the web (half productive- reading dishwasher reviews- ours broke, half destructive- some videos are better left un-watched), managing my foot pain and generally feeling badly about myself for not having participated in dominant culture's rituals of hygienic maintenance when my bestie texted. Cue the sad music as I immediately took this as my opportunity to tell someone just how badly I was feeling. It was dramatic, self-indulgent and in a word, wonderful. And, it was just the little boost I needed to get up and put pants on.
     
      As with most bestie-communication, a decoder ring is necessary to understand the conversation. The "scraping" refers to an  aspect of my wound care (I think it's a remnant medieval medical care techniques) whereby the podiatrist scrapes out any necrotic flesh from the wound, opening it up a little in the process, in order to ensure proper healing. It's not fun and it is discouraging to feel like you're moving backward instead of forward.
   
           'Nebuchadnezzars' are House Centipedes (the most hated and terrifying household bug I can think of.)  Nebuchadnezzar was a ruthless Babylonian king, most famous for throwing  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into the furnace after they refused to bow down to a big statue he'd made of himself. Yeah, that gem. He was kind of a jerk and pretty imposing, so we call the terrible creepers by his name (unless you are my daughter with a 4-year old accent. Then you call them 'Never-Ka-Nevers!' As is, they should never, ever be anywhere near a 4-year old little girl's room, especially not her underwear drawer. Yes, this happened. Yes, it was traumatic. Yes, she still talks about it in hushed and devastated tones)  - because when they are in the room, you pretty much feel ruled by them.

     So, for moments like these, the times when you want to tell someone, "It's noon and I haven't brushed my teeth and I'm feeling so sorry for myself that I'm imagining being eaten alive by centipedes," for those moments, you need your best friend. Because sometimes, you're just out of your mind... and someone's gotta understand your particular breed of crazy.

Warts and All

On this day, three weeks ago, I had "minor foot surgery." That's what I've been calling it- "minor foot surgery" because that sounds much better than saying "I had a massive colony of warts that was threatening to permanently take over my feet surgically removed ." It wasn't so bad. I'm lying, it was awful. The podiatrist sprayed some freezing solution on my feet (yes feet, there were warts on both feet. It's appropriate to be disgusted right now), stuck a sizable needle into the 'wart family' (as my son likes to say) and once the numbing took effect (about 7 needle jabs later- ouch!!)  burned the warts with a laser. The smell of burning flesh was cringe worthy, but not as bad as the next step. He took these giant cuticle-clipper looking things and began cutting the burnt wart bits out of my foot leaving bloody gaping wholes on my feet. I'm not squeamish and since I could feel nothing, I watched it all with fascination. He then began to shave the skin inside of the wholes, much the way you would raspberry sorbet, and honestly, that's pretty much what it looked like, pink, smooth, creamy foot-flesh. After he bandaged me up, and told me to take it easy for a few days (and by days, he meant weeks- minimizing jerk!) I actually thanked him. Yes, I knew, in theory, when I heard the scraping sound as he "removed all traces of wart tissue from the dermis floor" that it would hurt later, but one cannot exactly prepare for the descent of pain that has been artificially postponed via drugs. It's just so shocking. One minute I'm walking home on feet that I cannot feel, an hour later, "Mother of God, he ripped out parts of my foot!!"

 So, I spent Christmas break hopping and hobbling to the bathroom, sitting at my computer with my feet up, and generally not moving unless it sounded like the kids were seconds from death. My husband, who was also on break, picked up the slack, with only minimal evidence of frustration and was pretty much kind and catering- for three weeks. He's been great about it, but I'm getting pretty sick of myself. You know how people get sick and at first, you're all, "poor baby" and then after a few days you want them to suck it up and get over it. Well, that's how I've been feeling about myself- Come on, buck up! Fake it, till you make it. Be-Aggressive! Be-Be Aggressive! B-E-A-G-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E! Except, it's freaking hard to fake it when every step hurts. I have slapped that inner-cheerleader in her face more times that I can count (though I do appreciate how cute she looks in that pleated mini.)

Three weeks after my 'little procedure' I am getting around (with a cane) but am still generally cranky and self pitying. Each morning, my husband wakes up before me, makes breakfast, and gets the kids ready for school. This is great, we are the kind of couple that shares parenting and household responsibilities. But this morning, when I heard my little 4-year-old daughter saying 'happy birthday' to my husband, you'd think something would have registered. You'd think that I would have hobbled out of bed and at least join them at the table to eat the breakfast that he'd prepared. Nope. I thought, "that little girl is a dummy. She doesn't even know when her daddy's birthday is. Ouch, my foot." When my son came in talking about dad's birthday I thought vaguely the same thing. When my husband finally walked back in to the room to get dressed, I asked, "why is everyone talking about your birthday?" in an exasperated tone. It seriously never dawned on me that it might actually be his birthday, It never occurred to me that while on this day 3 weeks ago, a psychopath (ok not really) cut my foot up, on this day 34 years ago, the man who cooks me breakfast and drives hours to pick up my favorite pillow (that I left behind at the cabin we rented with friends), and wipes poopy bottoms (seriously, she's four years old and still refuses to wipe herself) and carries the air-conditioners up 3 flights every summer, was born.

So I guess I can be kind of a jerk sometimes.

yours,
hobbling to the store to pick up his favorites for dinner.

Dear Married Folks

Dear Married Folks,

My husband and I are about to walk, on purpose, down a dark and scary road. Really, that's what I envision every time I think the words 'marriage counseling.' Among other things, it's a scary road because of all of the freaks that reside there; consider what's more nightmarish; walking down a dark road littered with ex-cons or a dark road loitered by off-duty carnies from the Coney Island Freak Show? Exactly. Joining the world of counseling feels in many ways like joining the ranks of the deformed. "Is everything OK " "I thought you guys were doing so well?" "What do you need help with?"

We've been playing with the idea of counseling for over a year now, and are finally getting around to it (read: I've finally grown a pair of ovaries big enough to agree. Imagine that, the wife drags her feet while the husband readily agrees to marriage counseling; we are freaks!) Don't mind me, I deflect with humor and self-deprecation. The truth is, we're doing pretty well, I think. But, I'm afraid to go to counseling for the same reason that your 85 year-old grandma doesn't want to go to the doctor. She doesn't want to find out that things are worse than she could have guessed. Better to live with the aches and pains than find out that it's stage 4 melanoma. I'm good with that, granny. You wanna rock out your last years in the bliss of ignorance, cool. But I'm too young to pull that nonsense- if it's melanoma, I need to know now so I can chemo-therapize, radiationize, vegan, raw dietize, yoga blast that shit outta here! Wait, I'm not saying that there's a cancer growing in my marriage or anything. I love him. Lots. And, I'm sure of his love for me. After a decade of marriage, we've got lots of amazing things to show, but we've also got our old scars and fresher scabs. So, we agreed, it's time to let someone look under the hood. Yes, I know I'm mixing metaphors, deal with it (hey, I'm dealing with going to therapy...)

So that's the plan. Now, I'll employ my other faithful tactic for dealing with stress and fear (the first being the aforementioned deflection with humor and self-deprecation)- I'm probably going to go Rambo on therapy. (Full Disclosure: at first I wrote 'I'm probably going to go commando on therapy' but then I realized that that would imply that I was going to go to therapy without wearing any underwear. While that would certainly be an interesting experience, it's not really the one I'm going for here. Luckily, I remembered that the cinematic reference I was looking for was actually Rambo- dude goes berserk, takes no prisoners and is generally bad-ass for the entire film, and there's pretty much no mention of his undies at all. Yup, that's the one.) Yeah, so when something is scary, I often try to research the crap out of it, understand it, and be the best at it. I'll probably even compete with my husband a bit. So, don't be surprised if you meet my therapist on the street, ask her how I'm handling having to talk about my marriage with a total stranger, and she answers, "oh, she's handling therapy like a boss!"

Am I missing the point? Ah well, I'll let my therapist fix that.

Love and Life Y'all

Dear Chubby Girl

Dear Chubby Girl,

Put your big girl panties on and walk away from that fool.

OK, that's a little harsh, and a little simplistic and possibly a little narrow. But really, maybe it's not. I'm a chubby girl too.  To be fair, 'chubby' is what people say when they want to make terms like overweight and obese sound cuter- whatever, doesn't matter. Whatever you want to call it, I'm that too. But, the title of this letter could easily read a hundred different ways: "Dear shy girl, Dear girl with a big nose, Dear girl with crooked teeth, Dear not- the-brightest girl, Dear girl with a past, Dear fill in the blank with whatever adjective you most fear someone will point out at a party. All of you, put those bloomers on, or if you prefer, your micro-fiber hipster panties- and walk away from the loser (I know, I know, he's not, he's misunderstood, he needs you, he doesn't mean it, he's not always that way, I don't know him like you do, he LOVES you) that keeps telling you that all of the aforementioned titles (chubby, big nose, crooked teeth, less than impressive wit, unmentionable past) are what make you lucky to have his mediocre 'love.'

Now, I recognize that people can grow and change and work through things, and I am not a fan of the ever popular cut and run tactics that most of Hollywood (not to mention the rest of American society) employ in the arena of marriage. Primarily, though, I am not talking to the woman who has weighed the pros and cons and decided to commit to an imperfect man (aren't they all, aren't we all?) for better or worse (what to do then is a topic for another day entirely...), I am talking about the girl who has that irksome feeling, that little voice that's telling her "you don't deserve this, don't keep dating him, don't move in with him, don't marry him" but is tempted to listen to the louder, harsher lying voice (ever notice how people get louder and more emphatic when they're lying? Same goes for the voice inside.) which says "remember, beggars can't be choosers."

 It's true, beggars can't be choosers, (well except for that time when I was walking through the Lexington Ave tunnel on my way to catch the 6 Train and a homeless man asked me for money because he was hungry. I had a fresh, uneaten, sesame-egg bagel with veggie cream cheese- hello, heaven!- folded neatly in a brown paper bag. I offered it to him. I was coming from an evening church service and was feeling all kinds of good samaritan-y. The man, who did not smell quite as fresh as my bagel, refused my love offering, citing "too many carbs". I was pissed, "what the hell?! Too many carbs?! Whatchu on the Atkins' Diet??" Bye Bye good samaritan, hello Xena, defender of NY bagelkind!) Generally speaking though, no, beggars cannot be choosers, but you are not a beggar, at least not a beggar of love from a man who doesn't want to give it freely. If you want to beg, beg grace from the almighty, I won't argue with that. Beg for patience and strength and the grace to be kind to others when it's hard. Beg for peace and acceptance and love for who you who have been made to be, beg for self-control to stop the bad habits and patterns you've fallen into (we all have them) and the perseverance to change into the woman you want to be. But beg a man to stay with you when he's already shown you that he doesn't want to? No. Don't wait for him to leave you (he probably never will- you give him everything and require nothing of him) don't walk on pins and needles trying your best to eliminate all of the things that you think make him uncommitted and uncertain about you, trying not to give him a reason to leave. You choose- choose love, choose life.

Now's the time in this letter for me to tell you all the reasons why you are worth loving and why you should "believe in yourself". But, I'm not going to- maybe I'm not in the mood, or maybe I know that it can't come from  a letter from some stranger  or maybe it's because I've never been good at gentle words of encouragement (kick in the pants being my preferred style). And maybe telling you to put on your big girls panties, and walk away is harsh. Or maybe it's exactly right.

Love and life,
From a friend.