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I heard this morning that Jennifer Lopez hired a masseuse and a color therapist for her newborn twins. I thought that was wild. A masseuse–okay. I guess. Color therapist? Not sure what that’s about. I mean, obviously, I know what it’s about. I just can’t relate. That’s what I mean. So I was intrigued and wanted to learn more about the lifestyles of rich and famous babies. From ShowbizSpy:
The ‘Jenny From The Block’ star, whose twins Max and Emme were born last month, have also reportedly ordered 600-count Egyptian cotton cot linen, designer Babygros, diamond-engraved rattles and, two small Shetland ponies for the youngsters.
So 600-count Egyptian cotton–that’s good, right? I have nothing against buying quality cotton linens, even for babies who are going to urinate and spit up all over them. I mean, good cotton feels so nice. Lucky babies. I don’t think I’ve ever slept on 600-count anything. I don’t know what a Babygro is. I suppose I have to Google it. Okay, I guess it’s clothes? Designer clothes for babies. Fine. I mean, you want them to look good and be comfortable. I dig it.
I wouldn’t even say she lost me at the diamond-engraved rattles. They’re collectors’ items, eh? I assume she doesn’t intend for the babies to play with them. They’re just to look at–fondly, when they’re much older, and they can think to themselves, “Damn, Mom sure had a lot of money, didn’t she?” That’s cool. And I bet they could even sell them to support their drug and/or gambling habits later on in life, should the need arise. (Not saying it will. Just saying “if.”)
No, where she lost me was the Shetland ponies. Seriously, what the heck? THEY’RE BABIES. Why do they need Shetland ponies right now? Couldn’t that wait until they’re, I don’t know, able to sit up on their own? It’s not like they can even watch the ponies and get enjoyment from them that way because THEY’RE BABIES. They don’t even know where they are or what’s going on yet. They’re still learning how to tell the difference between the masseuse and the baby burper. They have no time to pay attention to other mammals. What is she thinking??? Says a source close to the celebrity:
“It may sound excessive but she’s only got her kids’ best interests at heart and wants to give them the start in life she never had.”
Ordinarily I don’t take issue with how rich people choose to spend their money. Being a good Republican and all, I’m sure that this diamond-engraved rattle and color therapist business helps the economy and makes the rest of us feel good about how thrifty we are in comparison. And I can totally get behind her spending $600K on extra security. Keep the babies safe, it’s all good. But I must confess, it’s stories like this that make me think that some people might have too much money. Not that there should ever be such a thing as too much money, but seriously–Shetland ponies for newborns? Not to get all social-gospel on your a**, Jenny-from-the-Block, but you couldn’t think of somewhere else to put that money? Something to help less-fortunate newborns get the start in life you never had? If you really felt like spending money on ponies, maybe you could have thrown a pony party for some starving children–that would have offered them a much-needed diversion from their dreary lives, and afterwards they could have eaten the ponies, assuming they were still hungry. I don’t know. I don’t know.
But enough picking on Jennifer Lopez. Let us examine the beams in our own eyes. What is the most frivolous thing you spend money on? And what is the most frivolous thing you can imagine spending money on?
Me first. Let’s see–frivolity, frivolity…It’s probably food. I’m willing to spend a lot of money on food, if it’s good. Well, let’s face it. I’m willing to spend a lot of money on any food, if I feel that I must have it. I spend $2.00 twice a week to buy my younger children a small bag of Ruffles potato chips and a package of Starbursts, just so they won’t hassle me while their older siblings are in swim class. That’s like a $16-a-month habit. $16 could feed a family of eight in some remote village of Africa for a week, or something. It’s a total waste of money, when I could very well just tolerate the hassle of two small children with a killer sense of entitlement and nothing to do. That would be character-building and more nutritionally sound. Everyone would win. But do I have any intention of mending my ways? Nope. Negative, Rampart. And our anniversary dinner last year that cost, like, $200 or something almost as wrong (or slightly wronger)? Worth. Every. Penny. I’d do it again. In a heartbeat.
Mmmm. Steak.
Anyway, the most frivolous thing I can imagine spending money on is…gosh, this is hard because I’m still thinking about food…okay, I’ve got it. I would hire a professional organizer to do my whole house, including garage–maybe even my car–and I would buy everything she told me to. Everything. Because if there’s any weakness that can rival my weakness for food, it’s organizational merchandise. My husband won’t let me set foot inside a Storables without supervision because he knows it’s like sending an alcoholic into a liquor store. I can’t visit the web site because it’s like porn for me. I could ruin our family with my storage-box addiction, if I didn’t suppress my yetzer hara. I would buy storage boxes just to house my kids’ potato chip bags. It is that bad.
Now it’s your turn to talk Shetland ponies.
Cleaning up after Elvis dumps the change jar in the master bedroom, Day 2
Madhousewife: Are we still finding money in this stupid bed?
Sugar Daddy: Are you complaining about finding money in the bed? I’m going to write a blog about how you’re all jaded now. “Oh, I don’t know when I want my housekeeper to come.” “I keep finding money in the bed.”
Madhousewife: The stupid bed. We need a new one.
This morning’s bad news: Elvis has discovered the garbage disposal.
Guilty Pleasures, Part 52
Once a friend of mine sheepishly confessed that she enjoyed listening to Delilah. I assured her that she had nothing to be ashamed of; sometimes I listened to Delilah, too (though I don’t think I enjoyed it as much as she did). Well, no more. It’s all about the John Tesh Radio Show now. He doesn’t just sit around choosing sappy love songs for the lovelorn. He is actively trying to make me smarter. Seriously, I learn a lot from his show. Just last night he was telling us how to avoid food poisoning at buffets. Word to the wise: Cold dishes should have ice around the sides of the bowl and not just on the bottom. If the food isn’t cold to the touch, it is already growing bacteria. The best part is that he said “growing bacteria” just as Chicago started singing, “You are my love in my life…You are my in-spi-ra-shun…”
I’m feeling a strange connection with John Tesh these days. He’s like a real friend, telling me what I need to know, not just the things I want to hear. I also sense that he’s sincere. He really wants me to have this information. I don’t know about the rest of you all, but sometimes I felt like Delilah was just phoning it in. John Tesh is keeping it real. Not just relationship advice, but safe buffet dining. I mean, for Pete’s sake, people can’t be always be in love, they gotta eat sometime. So I don’t care what anyone says. I like that John Tesh. Now if only he’d play some better music, we’d really be in business.
Madhousechildren discover the Muppet MoviesMister Bubby: I wish I was Kermit. Then I would never have to wear a shirt.Princess Zurg: But what if you were going on a date with Miss Piggy?
Mister Bubby: Then I would wear clothes.
P.S. The housekeeper’s coming over next Wednesday at 8:00 a.m.It was the darnedest thing. I actually had the phone in my hand, the number in front of me, and I was contemplating what I would say when the phone rang and it was housekeeping service scheduler asking me if I’d made a decision yet. It was like a sign from God. Good thing, because I probably could have contemplated for the rest of the day.When they come, I will tell them that any change they find in the bed is theirs.
My worst nightmare is that I will lose one of my children, permanently. My second worst nightmare is the thing that happened to me yesterday, which is that I lost one of my children and the police found him before I did. In case you were wondering, there is no satisfactory explanation for why an almost-four-year-old autistic boy would be riding a push-trike near a busy street sans shoes and wearing a dirty diaper. No, there is just no good spin for that one.
The worst part was when one of the (three!) officers questioning me asked whether I understood the meaning of “child neglect.”
Ouch.
Ouch.
Ouch.
The good news is that we are now the proud owners of a chain-and-padlock on our front door. The bad news is that I’m going to be depressed for the next several days. Don’t expect much from me.
I know this because every time I visit Epicurious.com, I get one of those Yoplait ads that splatter my window with what at first look like little pink condoms but are actually yogurt lids. You know, the kind you lick clean and send into Yoplait so they'll make a donation to breast cancer research. I like yogurt and I like breast cancer research, but I don't like to lick yogurt lids and put them in the mail, so I'm going to do something different to observe the season.
I've heard it said that if breast cancer were a man's disease, they would have found a cure for it by now. I've always found this theory slightly ridiculous, for two reasons. First, does it make any sense that there's a vast male conspiracy to rid the world of women's breasts? Second, and more importantly, there's the fact that IT'S CANCER! They haven't found a cure for testicular cancer either, as far as I know, and men have testicles, don't they? Except for the ones who've had testicular cancer, of course. Cervical cancer has a fairly high survival rate, and more men have breasts than have cervixes, so how do we explain that one?
The most important factor in breast cancer survival is early detection. Apparently this Friday is National Mammography Day. It's probably short notice to make an appointment with your radiologist, and they're probably swamped because of the holiday anyway, but fortunately it's never too late to observe this one–until, of course, it's too late. I'm about a year away from my first mammogram, but there's still something very important that I–and other women outside the mammography demographic–can do for the sake of my own breast health, and that's to perform a monthly breast self-exam.
My mother dutifully got her annual mammograms, and they always turned out fine. She did not, however, do monthly self-exams. Like many women, she was very uncomfortable with her body and didn't like examining it, which was why she didn't notice, until the day she accidentally glimpsed herself in the mirror while stepping out of the shower, that the lower half of her right breast had turned bright red. This was unusual enough to merit a trip to the doctor, who concluded that it was some kind of infection, so he put her on antibiotics. When the first course of antibiotics didn't resolve the problem, he prescribed a second course. Then a super-duper course. Then my mother got a new doctor, who didn't know what was going on either, so he decided to check her into the hospital for more extensive testing.
About three months or so after my mother's post-shower discovery, she had a diagnosis: breast cancer. It hadn't shown up on her last mammogram because it hadn't come in lumps. It came in tiny beads spread throughout her milk ducts. Eleven months later, after a mastectomy and several courses of chemotherapy, she died. She was 53.
There's no way to know, of course, if my mother could have discovered her cancer early enough to save her life. The odds certainly would have been better, though, if she'd been as diligent about her self-exams as she was about her mammograms.
You should know that I'm telling this story as much for my own benefit as anyone else's. Do I religiously perform my monthly self-exams, given that my family history puts me at greater risk for this type of cancer? Uh, sure. Sometimes. Unlike my mother, I don't have body-image issues, but I find I just don't have the time. Ten minutes out of the month to make sure my breasts haven't undergone any screwy changes I should know about? I mean, really, am I Superwoman? Plus, I just forget. Forget that a simple, non-invasive, completely-in-the-privacy-of-my-own-home test can prevent my children from having to endure the loss of their mother? Sure. All the time.
Guilt. It's my anti-(chemotherapy) drug.
In conclusion, ladies (and technically, gentlemen), do yourselves and your families a favor and do your monthly breast self-examination. It's more fun than licking yogurt off of pink tin foil.
I'm going to start my second year of blogging by admitting that I think I have nothing left to blog about. I've considered inviting you all to ask me questions that I promise to answer, so I won't have to come up with any original ideas on my own–at least not for a couple days–but I'm afraid you'll just ask questions that I don't know how to answer. For example, "What was your most embarrassing moment?" I hate that question. I hate it because a) why would I want to re-live my most embarrassing moment? b) why do you want me to re-live my most embarrassing moment? and c) I actively suppress every negative experience I have, and to recall my most embarrassing moment might require many hours of intensive self-examination that I'm totally uncomfortable with. I could have a psychic meltdown trying to answer that question.
The fact is, of course, that I'm so easily embarrassed, I wonder if I've really suffered anything that was truly, objectively humiliating. Oral presentations in high school–embarrassing. Crying in front of my music professor my freshman year of college–embarrassing. Playing Mother Bear in my grade-school's production of Hansel and Gretel–embarrassing. Failing my learner's permit test for the third time–embarrassing. Being picked up at school by my motorcycle-riding mother–embarrassing. Throwing up in the ladies' room at work–embarrassing. Having a bronchitis-induced coughing fit that nearly resulted in death during my Introduction to Political Science class–embarrassing.
The list goes on and on. Having to call people on the phone is embarrassing. Taking the car to the garage for repairs is embarrassing. Human interaction, face to face, always has the potential for grave embarrassment. I'm so easily embarrassed that I get embarrassed for other people, even when they aren't embarrassed for themselves. Sugar Daddy likes to read this website called patheticgeek.com or imacompletedork.org or something like that, which is just a forum for people to tell their most humiliating stories. It reads like that column they used to have (and perhaps still have, I wouldn't know) in ym where girls write in their most horrific, mortifying experiences–most of which are probably made up, but what difference does it make? Like I really believe that chick was so bored working in the school office that she decided to Xerox her bare butt, only to have the principal walk in and so she jumps off the copy machine and trips over her jeans, which are still around her ankles, and the principal comes over to help her up and all these other staff members come into the room at that same moment? Of course I don't believe that story. But still, I was embarrassed for her. I don't even like to watch movies where someone gets embarrassed. It just depresses me.
So you can see why I don't want to delve into my past, recent or ancient, and try to remember my most embarrassing moment, or any embarrassing moment. It's the reason I'll never be a great writer–because I shrink from confronting the depths of human experience. I'm at peace with that. Don't ask me to grow more as an artist or human being than I absolutely have to.
That said, if there's anything else you want to ask me, I promise to answer. I don't promise that it will be accurate or interesting, but if you're as bored as I am, you won't care anyway.
On a slightly different note, I watched Spanglish this weekend with Sugar Daddy. I'm not a big Adam Sandler fan, although I did enjoy The Wedding Singer–I don't think I've seen any of his other movies, for what I think are very good reasons. However, I really enjoyed Spanglish. I specifically enjoyed Adam Sandler, which was surprising and slightly disturbing. Like, by the time we got to the end of the movie, I wanted to sleep with him. Okay, not really. Well, maybe a little. No, not really. But I believed it when Paz Vega said she loved him, so he was either really good, or I was high on Jell-o pudding. And if you're contemplating telling me that admitting this should be my most embarrassing moment (second only, perhaps, to my infamous David Caruso obsession), don't bother. I just beat you to it.
(Yes, I know, it would have been more understandable if I'd wanted to sleep with Paz Vega instead–well, maybe I did and I just didn't want to admit it to myself, so it was one of those perverted projection things. She is really hot. My marriage is fine. Why are you hassling me?)
I made a decision this morning which is probably going to result in severe humiliation, but I'm desperate, so I'll just have to keep telling myself that. I really need to see a dentist. I have needed to see a dentist for years. The last time I had my teeth professionally cleaned, Princess Zurg was still living in my womb. Yeah, that was six and a half years ago. Point being? For a while my excuse was that I had no dental coverage. (Or money.) When I got dental coverage, I was new in town and didn't know any dentists. Then I had no dental coverage again. Then I had dental coverage and still knew no dentists. I asked people I knew from church about dentists, and everyone said they went to a woman in our ward who had a dental practice with her father, who also happened to be my former bishop. My initial reaction to this was, Ew. I didn't want anyone I saw socially to put their hands in my mouth and discover what was in there. That was just too much for me. But time went on and my teeth kept being neglected until finally I had to make a dental appointment for PZ anyway, so I tried to make one for myself at the same time–but I was pregnant again and they didn't want to see me without doing x-rays and they wouldn't do x-rays while I was pregnant, so they told me to come back after I had the baby. Like I was ever going to do that. I mean, it had taken me five years to make that phone call–did anyone really think I was going to be in a rush to call them back?
Anyway, Elvis was about four months old when we moved up here, and I thought, well, goody. At least I can go see a dentist I don't know now. Right? Wrong. I asked the only people I know here, people from church, and they all go see the dentist in our ward. A very nice gentleman, the one who pulled PZ's teeth last month, but…ew. I really didn't want to do this. But last night I was eating ice cream and a tooth on my left side started killing me, and I knew the time had come to swallow my pride–which you'd think would be digested and long gone by now, but apparently not–and just make an appointment with Dr. A. At least I know he's not a sadist. (Even though his real name, which shall remain anonymous, happens to be homophonous with a certain violent verb, which I think is very funny. But I digress.)
All of this goes to show that I need greater religious diversity in my social circle. I've known this for years. It's not that I haven't tried. Just last month I attended a MOMS Club meeting so I could meet some nice, non-Mormon ladies. It went less than swimmingly. Not just because my children were being anti-social nap-needers. A friend of mine (Mormon, naturally) asked me what it was like and I said it was a lot like attending a ladies' meeting at church, only no one felt obligated to talk to me because my eternal salvation wasn't at stake. I may go back again this month and give it another go, because I'm running out of ideas. The ladies in my tap-dancing class are nice, but they don't seem to be much on chit-chat. We're all too busy looking at our feet, I guess.
I'm not looking forward to my next pregnancy, for more reasons than one, but mostly because I know I'll be disappointed with whoever replaces the midwife I had in
Eugene. When I was pregnant with Mister Bubby, I was living up here temporarily and was seeking recommendations for a good midwife or obstetrician. There happens to be an LDS obstetrician in
Portland, and I think every pregnant Mormon lady in the metro area sees him. It's kind of creepy, if you ask me. They say they feel more comfortable with him "because he's a bishop"–to which I say, "I didn't know uteruses had bishops." Seriously, folks, what is the deal?
Anyway, I ended up just picking someone out of the phone book because a) I wasn't looking for a father figure in my doctor, especially not my OB/GYN, and b) I didn't care if he wasn't in my ward–if I had run into him at the temple or something, I would have felt weird. Kind of like that time in college when I ran into my math professor whilst picking up feminine hygiene products at the Food Lion. My, he was a chatty math professor. Anyway, as it turned out, a couple years later I was in this doctor/bishop's ward, and I was very glad not to be sitting in Sunday School with someone on such intimate terms with my cervix. Call me crazy, call me a freaking prude, but there it is.
Intellectually I recognize that my reservations are silly, perhaps even childish. I don't think I really believe that every time I walk into church, the man or woman who happens to be my health care professional is going to think, "There's the lady who doesn't like to floss," or "That gal sure screams a lot when she's in transition." On the other hand, I've been on the receiving end of Too Much Information about certain people I go to church with, and I can tell you it's no fun shaking hands with the guy greeting you at the door and thinking about whatever intimate detail his wife told you about his sexual preferences. (I mean, I never heard anything all that bizarre, but still…ew.)
So anyway, I'm going to go see Dr. A on the 26th, and hopefully he will not tell me I need a root canal or faint dead away at the sight of all this tartar buildup. Yeah, I know, none of you wanted that information, either. I'll try to be more genteel tomorrow.
But now I'm going to have one of those Dear Diary moments and confess something that is, quite frankly, disturbing me. I was watching CSI:
Miami last night, and I realized that I have a thing for David Caruso. Which is disturbing because I'd previously thought that I actually found him rather annoying. It's true, he does have red hair, and maybe that's what it is. But he's just…so…intense…it borders on ridiculous. That's what I was thinking when I had my awful revelation. "This guy is so intense, it's ridiculous. Actually, it's annoying. But is it annoying because it's ridiculous, or is it annoying because I secretly find it irresistably sexy?" Really, I haven't been this embarrassed since I started crying in the middle of Armageddon. (Oh, like you didn't.)
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