Ahhh....I Can Sleep Tonite and You Can All Stop Looking...

I am thrilled to report that the brilliant GTChristie of The Moxie Files has come up with, not the answer to my query, but with a way of getting it, and, by George, get it I did !!!

Bless his kind heart and vast stores of knowledge.....who knew that that little tab up in the left hand corner of the screen labelled "History" can give you every damned site you  ever visited, if you have the time and strength to scan each entry into infinity..

You all may have known, but I didn't, and lo and behold, after only 10 or 12 abortive attempts to zero in on the right time frame, I FOUND  the blog about sex which I was looking for and which I mentioned in my last post.  Naturally, after all this fuss I will gladly offer it up for anyone wishing to slake their curiosity or sink so low into the tawdry details, but not tonite.  My eyeballs and fingers are too tired.

Thanks to all of you who so valiantly tried to help me......I love you for that.  And many thanks to the beloved GTC.......you should all be grateful to him too.

Needless to say......more later.

I Need Your Help

This is probably the weirdest blog I ever wrote and possibly that you ever read........particularly considering  the subject matter.  I will not dilly dally nor dither around the bush and will bravely accept any censure , flogging or stoning you might fling at me.......trying to remember and locate a blog I read recently is driving me crazy and only you guys can help.  (providing one or more of you happens to know which blog I am referring to and is willing to share.......which I fervently hope.....

Inspired by Murr Brewster's (Murrmurrs) recent brilliant blog concerning odd sex practices and Rick Santorum, I somehow happened upon a blog that was a sort of an Ann Landers Advice column type thing.  It displayed a letter from a perplexed wife who was complaining that she and her husband only had sex like twice a week, but that he much more frequently seemed to prefer his own hand to her charms and it was eroding her self-confidence.  The blog-writer's answer was a brilliant and wonderful essay on masturbation .......the punchline of which was that if she was getting great sex with her husband twice a week she should give thanks rather than rock the boat.

Have any of you dear readers seen the post and can you tell me who the Blogger is and the name of the Blog?  I long to reread it and perhaps even quote from it in a blog of my own.  (yes, I can talk dirty).

Any info will be greatly appreciated.

WTF......Caftans Out of Style? When Did That Happen?

In a charming blog the other day, Cathy, of Still Waters, mentioned that since caftans were coming back into style she went into her closet and extracted a few well loved ones from the cobwebs in the back.....caftans coming back into style???? 

Holy crap.....are you telling me that they ever went out of style?    Not that I care.......they are what I live in 12 months of the year. For the summer I have a bunch of lovely flowing cool cotton jobs and for the california winter I made a bunch out of sweat shirt fleece, and, for parties, from velour (cotton/polyester velour, that is, so that I can wash them in case I dribble bbq sauce down the front at the latest neighborhood soiree).    I keep saying I don't understand things the older I get.....well......it continues to get worse.....I cannot understand why comfort has to be a sin in the fashion world.  I keep hearing decent, sensible people vilified and ostracized for wearing comfy pants with waist elastic and vain and foolish others sanctified because they wear uncomfortable pants with zippers, in which you are OK as long as you don't want to eat, breathe, sit down or, godforbid, sneeze. The world is mad, I tell you. Save those caftans or, when you get to be 80 you will regret it..     Talking about uncomfortable clothing reminded me of the ultimate torture  garment that I wore daily for a year or so back in the 50's.............this is to demonstrate that I too suffered from vanity and foolishness in my younger life.............have any of you ever heard of the Playtex Rubber Girdle?  

To demonstrate that women have always been obsessed to insanity about their shapes and willing to almost  give up life itself to make some body part smaller, let me describe this product of some sadistic mind......male I am sure. As I recall this item was made our of a pink or  beige rubber, lined (or flocked, they used to call it) with a soft, thin fleece like cotton.  This was so that a person would  be able to don the damned thing....that is, schlepp it up over calves and thighs and hips up to waist height without tearing all the skin off the lower part of one's body, or worse, getting it stuck halfway up and  being paralyzed, since it was tough stuff and would bind one's legs together making them incapable of moving.........imagine having to call 911 under such circumstances.   

Once on, it molded all the bulges into a smooth line from waist to thighs.  If you were lucky, the place where the girdle ended on your thighs was not particularly fleshy, thereupon leaving just the smallest dent and not creating a horrific bulge where the girdle ended.  At the waist, however, no such luck.  Anyone needing to wear such a garment always had a roll of fat along ribs and waist which simply created what they now call "muffin top" I believe.  Unless you happened to be long waisted......or was it short waisted?....... in which case one could pull it up onto one's ribs and avoid the dreaded overflow.  This  sadly created a condition which pulled at the skin on your ribs making one tend to lean slightly forward.....aha.......I just figured out why that wonderful Carole Burnett character, Mrs. Wiggins, the secretary to  Tim Conway, had that strange forward lean to her posture.....she must have been wearing a Playtex, Rubber Girdle.    

By the way, getting out of the PRG was easier than getting into it.....one simply rolled it down to one's ankles and stepped out of the roll of wet rubber........ Oh, I am so ashamed......

All of this, however, is only the beginning of the horror story.  The Playtex folks promised that this girdle would make you lose weight by making you perspire (sweat) the moisture out of the fat on your fat hips and belly, thereby rendering you (yes, exactly....)  thinner, if used  faithfully.  Unfortunately, one did sweat profusely inside this hot rubber wrapping.......the cotton lining was supposed to absorb the moisture but it didn't make a dent.  Consequently, you were enveloped in a very peculiar, not terribly offensive but definitely puzzling odor of  hot, wet rubber with just a touch of something else, also not very attractive except to animals who seemed to find it magnetic........embarrassing, to say the least.

If you are wondering why any person in their right mind would subject themselves to such torture, don't be silly.   Women have always done terrible things to themselves in the quest for beauty........witness a 13 year old girl with incredibly curly hair going to bed nightly wearing curlers ....the old kind were exactly like boar bristle hairbrushes (no foam rubber in those days) and hurt your scalp and skull like hell, plus layers of scotch tape pasted across bangs to straighten them and a shoe lace tied around the neck and around the lower portion of the hairdo just above the lower row of bristly curlers which were rolled up facing the neck ...........even more painful than the upper ones.....to create a Page Boy Bob exactly like Ginger Rogers wore in her movies with Fred Astaire.     

Did it work? Was it worth it?  Don't be ridiculous......I can still hear the "boing" of my hair snapping back into all over curls as soon as the instruments of torture were removed in the morning.......including the  bangs.  Why did I persist?  I have no answer to that question.......it is the perfect description of insanity....one continues to do the same thing over and over to achieve a certain outcome and fails miserably every time, yet, one persists endlessly........sheer madness.       


Sob.  It is the story of our lives.

Fat Cats, Skinny Cats and the Cat Servants who Pander to Them

Gussie Winnie, Baskin and I spent a very pleasant quiet weekend.  I have reconsidered my hysteria re Gussie's bones.  After much pondering and a conversation with the Vet, I have come to the conclusion that Gusssie is really OK.....I think it is me who is sick (in the head).  I have thought it all through many times and think now that perhaps I panicked.  I am so partial to and so used to fat cats I thought she was at death's door being so skinny and losing weight.  She seems to be totally content and happy.  I don't think she is losing any more right now.  It may simply be old age....she was always a slim cat and she is getting up there in years.....I don't know how old exactly. Rescued strays do not come with birth certificates.   I know old cats often get very skinny.  I plan to simply keep indulging her disgustingly, watching her carefully and feeling her bones.  Have no plans for further tests or specialists etc. right now.  Needless to say, I am watching her very carefully and will not neglect any danger signs.

  

I had a brilliant idea the other day about how I can monitor her weight and either ease my worries or drive myself off the cliff.  All I had to do is weigh her every few days to see how we were doing.  Sure.  Oh yeah.  Sounds so simple doesn't it?  I do not know why, during my long lifetime, everything that sounds so simple and ought to be simple ends up so damned complicated you simply must bang your head against the nearest wall repeatedly.......unfortunately I replaced most of the walls in my house with glass years ago so that limits not only my head-banging needs but my picture hanging area.......well, as they say,"Nothing is perfect".  


"Why", you may ask, "is this simple idea so difficult to execute?"  In your house it may not  be so difficult at all, but you must remember, you are dealing with a rather farmished (mishugina) (fercockta) (slightly crazy person) here.......and with limitations physical and especially optical.  It's like this.......for most of my life I used to weigh myself every morning......when you have spent your lifetime dieting, weighing yourself every morning is like breathing in and out.  So is sighing with relief and/or shrieking with anguish, depending on what the numbers say.  Recently though, I find I often pass up this pleasure/pain partly because there is not much I can do about it anymore if the numbers go up......I cannot exercise more nor can I eat any less, and frankly, if the numbers should begin to go down I would probably freak out with worry about what might be wrong with me rather than jump up and down with joy and triumph, so, hell why bother.  Also, I can hardly see the dial numbers  anymore and must utilize a guesstimate based on where the pointer is in relation to the next big black up and down mark.  Not the most accurate system........not so  bad for a rotund, zoftig old person whose poundage exceeds.....well, nevermind.....but totally useless when you are dealing with ounces on a 7 1/2 pound cat.



In addition, for anyone who has never weighed or attempted to weigh a live animal...........you don't just stand them on the scale and tell them to hold it right there while you read the dial, even if you have 20/20 vision.  The method is to first weigh yourself.  make careful note of the exact number.  Then grab or attempt to grab the animal, step gingerly onto the scale while screaming from the clawing or gasping from the wriggling, and attempt to peer over the furry body which is now wrapped around your head to see what the numbers are.  First efforts are rarely successful.  Second efforts are more difficult because the animal is now wary, unsure of what the fuck this thing is all about, but convinced that it is not in their best interests and therefore more difficult to catch up.  Third attempts must wait till later in the day when the animal has almost forgotten the strange event and you have had time stem the bleeding or catch your breath or both.

 

But there still remains the problem of reading the dial.  Consequently, this is where your significant other or my caregiver must enter the picture.   How you explain what is needed with a straight face is up to you, but what is involved basically is that the assistant must get down on hands and knees by the dial of the scale and be prepared to take an instant reading if you are lucky enough to hold  onto the animal for long enough to make that possible.  Sadly, anyone who has a love/hate relationship with scales as I do knows that there is always a specific position, slight sideways or forward lean that gives you the most favorable reading.  When holding a crazed, wriggling animal, fuggeddaboudit.  If the pointer stops, even for a moment, it must be captured then or not at all.   And recorded immediately, by the way,  so that the groans and curses of the holder and shrieks and complaints of the animal do not distract to the point of forgetting the number altogether thus requiring a redo.  

Well, I could go on, but why?   You are surely either nodding your head in agreement, laughing at my idiocy or crying in sympathy by now. If you think I am exaggerating then you have never tried to weigh an animal while being half blind plus old, weak and unsteady on the weighing platform.  To which I utter a heartfelt congratulations and the comment that you are a better (and luckier) man than I am Gunga Din.

Well, It's Like This.....The Situation is Murky......

Sometimes I wring my hands and shriek, "What's to become of me?" and instead of having a gorgeous Rhett Butler to toss over his shoulder, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.",   all I get is a tired voice from within muttering, "damned if I know."

I have been struggling for weeks with a sick kitty......sick in the sense that for months now she has been losing weight till she is merely skin and bones and concurrently demanding to be fed approximately every 3 1/2 minutes.  Naturally, I am feeding her every 2 minutes and having every test known to man and felines performed on her  to determine the "why" of it. 

Last week my Vet took more tests and determined that one of the thyroid test results showed an abnormality so he was convinced tht she might have a benign growth on her thyroid causing hyperthyroidism which would explain the symptoms.  He explained to me that there is an animal hospital here which specializes in doing thryroid scans and, if a tumor shows up, administering a week of radioactive iodine treatments with a 97% success rate.  Of course the treatment is so exalted that you must mortgage your home to pay for it, and your cat comes home a bit radioactive for several weeks (don't let her sleep on your bed for about 12 days) but it is a cure and after that, (except perhaps for an occasional glowing in the dark..... (the cat, hopefully not YOU) everything should be fine.

So for 2 sweeks now (first available appointment was today)  I have been opening cans and preparing kitty smoothies just like Gussie likes them and grilling liver and giving her kitty treats at the least little "meow" and allowing her to sleep endlessly on a fake fur pillow strategically located on my boobs and tummy while I recline in the lounger and wonder if this is the life's purpose my mother had in  mind for me.

Just to prove that sometimes life tests a person beyond endurance, the only appointments available at the west LA office of this one-of-a-kind treatment center are on wednesdays, the one day of the week that my driver and caregiver, Florence, does not come and I had no intention of driving to Tustin (wherever the hell that is in Orange County) on any of the other days so it was time to call in some raincheck favors.  Uh-huh.  I will not pursue this path except to say that I did finally find one friend willing to take me so I should just shut my mouth and be grateful.  Realized much later that I should have simply called the Agency and hired another caregiver driver for 3 or 4 hours.....it would have actually been less expensive since SUV's seem to hold a lot of gasoline in their tanks. 

But never mind all that.........we, of course, encountered the obligatory construction blockage on the way to the Hospital which made it a good thing that we had left the valley about 40 minutes earlier than needed and we arrived at the place on time, were received, I tearfully handed Gussie over to be taken to the scanning room and thence to the radioactive kitty center and, after taking my friend to lunch, lurched into the house, ripped off all my garments, donned The House Robe and sank into the recliner to allow Winnie to try out the pillow on my boobs and tummy while I awaited the news from the Doctor at 7 or 8 pm this evening.

Well, it turns out that Gussie does NOT have a tumor on her thyroid so I can go back and pick her up tomorrow and can spend the rest of my days taking her for various tests to try to find out why she is so skinny.....(he thinks perhaps a bowel condition which does not let her absorb the nutrition from her 37 meals a day but then, who can tell without more tests.).  I will be happy to get her back un-radio-iodized so she can sleep on my bed immediately without having to wait 12 days and without my having to confront her glowing in the dark some nite.  As for the bill amounting to the national debt which I was preparing to pay........not to worry....it will only be about a third as much because she does not require the treatment and the week's hospital stay......and I can spend the rest for further tests at other Veterinary Centers. 

The irony is that, thru all of this, Gussie has not complained once of being too skinny....(she probably subscribes to the "you can't be too thin or too rich" theory)  ...I am the one who screams and groans and tears my hair as I run my fingers along the poor little furry skin and bones creature.  If I can keep her at 7 1/2 lbs with the 37 meals, perhaps I should just let it go at that.....but noooooo......I would, of course, have to be that crazy person who likes her cats to be fat.  If she were only more like Winnie, who is now so fat she can hardly bend herself in half into that amazing cat position so she can wash her hiney.   Often I have to help her do that.  I really would not want Gus to be that fat.........having to wash two cats' behinds would really strain my sense of dignity.............if I still have one.

So, y'all say you want to know what I have been up to...........don't you wish you hadn't asked?