In the Old Days, I Was Not Old

I haven't blogged in over a week. I went to bed last night at 7:00 PM, after I watched most of an episode of Dr. Phil. What happened to me?

I'm buying night cream for wrinkles and making desperate phone calls to my hairdresser/sister because the gray hairs keep showing back up. Each time I look, the little silvery bastards are more organized and have become so daring as to appear in a perfect little boot camp line along my part.

Two nights ago, I woke up to pee. TWICE.

The stand-up comedians on cable are becoming less and less hilarious, and I hear my mother's words pour out of my mouth "That's not funny, that's just rude."

So forgive me if the inevitable arrival of my 30th birthday is causing me to pop a xanax and rant about some flawed political system or other. I've got to let the stress out somehow, and doing a keg stand with a beer bong on the side just doesn't seem to do anymore.

Happy Hospice Day!

Yesterday was Mother's Day, I know. But my family celebrated another holiday as well. This is a lesser known holiday. And like Easter, it doesn't always fall on the same day. Some years it falls on your birthday, sometimes on Christmas and sometimes on a regular old Tuesday. But this year, Hospice Day came on Mother's Day!

Never heard of it you say? Well, maybe that's because you have never had a terminally ill person or three living in your home. It works like this: the Hospice Fairies come to your house and deliver all sorts of goodies. Pamphlets, medical equipment and emergency morphine death kits. Lots and lots of family members and friends come over in rotating shifts and whisper nice and sometimes awkward things about the person you are celebrating for.

Then, everyone stays up real late at night and tells stories about the Hospice King or Queen laying in the special bed in the quiet room in the back of the house. Different families have different traditions when it comes to this part of Hospice week. Our family gets real drunk every night starting at about four in the afternoon. Then we start making up songs about everything we are doing at the moment. This year, we started a new tradition where the youngest daughter of the family shows the oldest daughter her vajazzle first thing in the morning. Happy Hospice Morning Sister!

If you have never celebrated this holiday, I hope you get to someday, because geeze, it's about the best one there is!

So It's True What They Say, About First Impressions

Lately I've been trying to subtly convince my boyfriend that I would make a good wife and mother. I think this would be a lot less difficult if our "How We Met" story was a little different.

The night I first set eyes on my boyfriend, he had already set eyes on me from across the dance floor. My heavy eye make-up, high heeled dancing shoes and tight jeans were a beacon of hope for any single man wanting to get all up on a tall, leggy, childless woman. I didn't leave my apartment that night with the intention to make out with the first automobile mechanic that bought me a vodka tonic. Alas, there I was, licking the inside of the mouth of this man who paid for my drink and told me that he "worked on cars." Much to the enjoyment/embarrassment of the other club patrons, we worked the dance floor in the most erotic way two white people can. As a matter of fact, The only reason I didn't follow this mechanic home that very night was because I had carpooled with my roommate.

It only took a couple more awkward movie and or bowling dates for me to prove just what type of girl I was. The exact opposite type of girl you'd like to marry and make the mother of your children. Let's face it. This early on, men want an enthusiastic gymnast, not Betty Crocker.

That was more than a year ago and I'm beginning to worry that I may have not behaved in the most appropriate way possible. In an effort to adjust the dynamic of our situation, I just bought a recipe book so I could figure out how to make muffins. I hope my efforts aren't totally obvious or pathetic. Hey... Maybe I'll just bake the muffins with nothing but a g-string and my new oven mitts. Who wouldn't want to marry that?

Maybe Unconditional Motherly Love is a Myth

When I was a child my mom used to volunteer for the Right to Life organization in a booth at the state fair. She would sit proudly and distribute literature and pencils to cowboy-booted and mustachioed passers by about the miracle of life and how that miracle begins at conception. "Every life is precious" she would announce. Her deep rooted belief that every child has the right to be born was evident in the fierce, blue eye shadowed stare she would shoot at the Right to Choosers across the way.

Until recently, I have always felt that my mother loved my brother, sister and I, no matter how many times we annoyed her or made her so angry that most moms would have wished they had exercised their right to choose. A few months ago I drove up to my mom's house for a visit and we were out running errands. We drove past a billboard that featured several middle aged women with somber looks on their faces and a slogan that read "We had abortions and we regret it." My mother looked at me and I expected to hear her agree with the anti-abortion message. Instead she just said. "I regret not having three abortions."